How to Replace Rear Axle Shaft Seal and Bearing 2000-06 Chevy Tahoe

I'm going to start by taking the wheel off. I'm going to use a 22-millimeter socket to take off all the lug nuts. And take the wheel off. Now we can take these caliper bolts out, I'm going to use a 12-millimeter socket to loosen those up. And if the caliper slide is spinning, you can use a 17-millimeter wrench to hold it while you take the bolt out. Now you can grab the caliper. You might want to rock it back and forth a little bit, that'll compress the piston a little, make it easier to slide off. Then you can use a brake caliper hanger and just hang it from the upper control arm or you can hang it from the coil spring, just like that. Just make sure there's not any tension on the brake hose itself. Now I'll take the brake pads off. Just slide them out of the way. Now we're going to take the bracket off. You need to take these two bolts out, use an 18-millimeter socket to loosen these up. And then grab the bracket and just slide it off. Now we're going to take the rotor off, just grab it and slide it. If it's stuck on there, you can take a hammer and just hit these locations.

It's stuck on the parking brake a little bit, just try to wiggle it and just take a pry bar and try to pry in here a little bit and get this off. I'm just going to take two screwdrivers just try to wiggle this back and forth. There we go. Slides right off. I took all the breaks off of this side. I did the same on the other side. Now to access the cover, I'm going to pull this bar out of the way. I'm going to use a 13/16 wrench or a 21-millimeter wrench. On the backside, there's a nut on the other side of this bolt, and take that bolt out. Use a 21-millimeter socket. I'm just going to use a bungee cord and just pull this out of the way.

Now it's always a good idea before you take the cover off to take the fill plug out. Otherwise, if you can't get the fill plug out, then you won't be able to add fluid to it after you're done. So just use a 3/8 extension and a ratchet. Here we go. Now some of these cover bolts are pretty rusted, so I'm just going to take a wire brush, just try to clean up some of the rust. Right. Now I'm going to take the cover off. I'm going to use a 13-millimeter socket to take all these bolts off. I'm going to leave the top one in a little bit, just leave it loose, and then I'll pry the cover off.

This one has the brake bracket right here, brake hose bracket, or brake lines, move it out of the way. Just be careful. If this looks really rusty, be more careful with it. I'll just loosen this one up. I'll just leave it like that. Make sure you have a drain bucket underneath before you start taking those bolts out and just get a screwdriver or a pry bar. Just get underneath the cover and just slowly pull it back and let the fluid drain. And once that's loose, you take the bolt off and slide the cover out. There you go. You need to put the transmission in neutral and rotate the drive shaft so that this bolt ends up right here because we're going to take that pin off. Now I'm going to take this bolt out, which actually has a pin that goes through there and I'm going to use an 8-millimeter socket. You can try to use a wrench. Sometimes it's not so easy. And just take that off, loosen that up. And slide this out.

You're going to have to go around the carrier and then try to push on the pin and slide this out. Now I'm going to carefully rotate the driveshaft again. Just make sure the gears aren't turning because you don't want them to fall out. That looks okay. Now I need to hit the axle, use a rubber mallet or a dead blow. Just tap it in. What you're looking for is there's a clip in there and you need to be able to access that clip. Right now I can't get to it. So I've going to tap this in more. Right.

So now the C clip is out far enough that I should be able to grab it with a magnet. Just use a magnet and grab it. You might have to rotate it a little bit. Slide it out like that. Now I can use a pry bar and just pry the axle out. Be careful, just pry right where the parking brake mechanism is, right there. Once you pry out that far, then it should be easier to pull it out. There is a reluctor wheel in there that it presses on to and it just drops down once you pull that out. And slide the axle out. Now we're going to install the studs on the axle. Now you want to make sure you install them this way. You don't want to put them in backwards. So make sure with the shaft of the axle, the studs go through this way. So there are many different ways you can do this. We're going to use a ball joint press to get this lined up and you could go to a hydraulic press if you had a hydraulic press and tighten it down.

You want to compress it all the way and loosen that up. And do the same for the other ones. Or if you're replacing your rotor anyway, you can put your rotor down, put this down backwards like this, line this up, and then take a hammer and just hammer it in. And when you get that down, you're good to go, move on to the next one. You just want to make sure you don't want to use it on a rotor that you're going to keep. You can use different types of seal pullers or sometimes even just a pry bar works good. Just get underneath there and just pry it out. Now I'm going to take a bearing puller and just slide this in position, get that lined up, this washer on, and then tighten this nut down. Now I'm going to use a slide hammer, get that all tightened up, and take the bearing out. There we go. Now we'll take the bearing and a bearing installer and just slide it in position. Take a hammer, tap it in.

Now you kind of want to pay attention to how deep it was in there before you took it out. Take a look. A little bit further. It will eventually bottom out and if you get to that point, that's okay. That looks good. Now I'm going to take the seal. Just make sure you check the edges around here. You can wipe them with a towel or something or a rag and they look good. There's nothing wrong there. Just take the seal, put that on, and the best way to install this type of seal use a block of wood. If you had a four by four, go this way, it works good. Just lay it flat like that. Use a hammer and give it a tap.

That's good. Or you can use a seal installer as well. Now, before you slide the axle back in, just take a little bit of your axle lube, your gear oil. You can check your owner's manual for the correct type and just lubricate that bearing and just spin it around a little bit and just take a look at those studs, make sure they're all the way down, make sure there's no air gap. And slide the axle in. And then you're going to have to tip it up a little bit just to get it. And you don't want to twist it too much because then you're going to mess up the spider gears. And I'm going to have to give it to a couple more taps so that I can get that C clip in. That looks good. And just take the clip, slide it in position. It's all the way in. Then just slide the axle up. Then you can do the same procedure on the other side. And after you're done that, then rotate the drive shaft and get the pin lined up. You may have to move the spider gears. Just make sure the hole is lined up with where the bolt goes. There we go. You can give it a little tap with something soft. And slide the pin back in, the pin bolt. Tighten that up.

Now I'm going to torque this bolt to 27 foot-pounds. This vehicle has an 8.6 rear-end. If you have a nine and a half rear-end, you're going to torque that to 37 foot-pounds. At this point, you can put the vehicle back in park. At this point, I can use a scraper or even a razor blade, just be careful if you're using a razor blade and just scrape off any excess gasket material. Now I'm going to use a little brake parts cleaner and just wipe this down. Just try not to spray directly into the gear. Now I can take the gasket and just line that in position. And take the cover. Try to go over the gear. There you go. Just twist it a little bit.

You don't have to pick the sway bar links out, but you could if you were struggling with that and just line this all up. And get the bolt started. And now I can move this brake hose bracket down and brake lines and put that bolt through. I'm just going to snug these down before I torque them down. Now I'm going to torque this to 30 foot-pounds and make sure you torque it in a cross pattern. So we'll torque this one and then just go criss-cross. All right. That's all of them. If you're not going to use this fill plug to fill up the rear differential, you can use a 10-millimeter hex socket and tighten that up. Just make sure it's snug. Now, just hook this up and torque this to 77 foot-pounds.

With the fill plug out, I'm going to add the limited slip additive first. It's a good idea to add it and do that first before you add the gear oil and then add the proper gear oil. You can check your owner's manual. You can use a hose to get the fluid into the rear diff. All right. Now, as you're filling this up, if you notice that it starts coming out of the fill plug, then that's up to the ideal level. Certain vehicles it doesn't have to go all the way to the fill plug. You want to check your owner's manual and put the appropriate amount of fluid in. Now put the fill plug in. And snug this up, not too tight. Once it starts getting a little snugger, just a little bit more. That's good. Take a little brake parts cleaner and clean it off. Now, take the caliper bracket and line it back up. Brake caliper bolts, get those started.

Now I'm going to torque these bolts to 122 foot-pounds. Now I'm going to put the brake pads on. Now the warning indicators are going to go to the top. So on the inboard pad, it goes at the top and same with the outboard pad. Just slide them in position. That's good. Now I'm going to take the brake caliper off the hook and just slide it over the brake pads, put the caliper bolts in. Take a 17-millimeter wrench and torque this bolt to 30 foot-pounds. Do the same on the top. Put the wheel on and put the lug nuts on. Now I'm going to torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a cross pattern so that it tightens the wheel down evenly. And just go around and double-check.