How do you remove the rotor from a 1996 ford bronco?

Answer 1

It is easy to do but takes time and you need to pay attention to what order you remove the items. Jack up the Bronco and support with jack stand on the side you are working on. It does not make sense to do both sides at the same time as that is a ton of weight just hanging up there. I prefer having 3 wheels on the ground. My 96 bronco has manual locking hubs.

1) Take off chrome cap with a small torx. They are not that tight.

2) remove 1st retention clip. This can be done with 1 (2 is better) small tip screwdriver. Then remove the large retainer clip that is circling the inside lip of the hub itself, keeping the lockable gear assembly in place. Again just use a screwdriver.

3) this should allow the entire inner and outer locking gears to basically 'spring' out as they are being pushed by the spring behind it. There is another easy retaining clip that keep the inner gear inside the outer gear but you don't have to remove this clip as the innner and out gear come out as 1 piece. Take the large spring out also obviously.

4) now the fun begins. You will see an odd large nut with 4 notches on it. This looks like a special socket is needed but it is not. All you need is a large flat srewdriver and a hammer to gently tap "counter clockwise" as this nut is not torqued down very tight (and will not be when you put back on either).

5) take off the large washer with all the little holes in it. Remove it with a little angled pick of somesort as it just needs some help getting it all the way out of the hub. Notice the notch out lip on it as it only slides back on at a particular angle.

6) take off the next large nut the same way with a srewdriver, small pry bar etc. Remember counter clockwise. Notice the little 'nipple' of metal pointing towards you. This nipple actually goes through one of the holes in the washer you just took off (when re assembling). This is why I say pay attention to these small details as they matter.

7) now take out the outer bearing and repack with grease. Use the grease in the palm of your hand trick and just keep scooping and rotating until grease squeezes up and out of the race.

8)remove the hub.

9) now drive all 5 studs out by putting one lugnut on hand tight and tap it down with a hammer. To reverse you might want to use a large nut that fits loosely over each stud and air impact all 5 back on using 1 lugnut over your large nut as a spacer basically. I tried to just hammer them back in from the other side using a 3/4 extension and just could not do it all the way. The rotor was loose a bit so the impact gun idea worked best for me, or maybe just needed a bigger hammer!

10) The abs or speed sensor ring or whatever it is (looks like a fan sort of) just taps off with a screwdriver and hammer and taps right back on. Who cares what it is, just put it back on where you took it off.

11) to get the hub to fall out of the rotor I just hammered lightly on the outside of the back bearing race. It did not dent too bad and the hub just fell out.

12) repack the rear bearing after removing the seal. I even reused the seal as there was no grease leaking from it so what the heck.

13) put it all back together in reverse. I'd go through this all but honestly if you got this far you can do it. Just don't hammer too tightly the 2 large nuts, just one or two light taps so the hub assembly is snug. Don't forget to line up the metal nipple on the inner nut with any hole in the washer that goes between the 2 large nuts.

14) did I have to tell you how to take the brake pads off? I hope not.

Lastly the only mistake I made while doing this is treating that large retainer clip like a cv joint clip where you put it on first and the part it holds in place just "clips" in place. So I put it on the inner lip of the hub tip 1st then tried to tap the inner and outer gear knuckle into the hub. It almost goes in all the way but won't quite go enough to put that last smaller retainer clip on the end tip of the axle. I finally figured it out and took the retainer clip out, put gear assembly in, then clip back into the slot it belongs in. Now there was room for the axle tip retainer and the chrome locking cap to seat properly into the hub. Duh!

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