1994 Ford Eddie Bauer Bronco 351 5.8 4X4 Brakes & Hubs

Technically, your questioin is how to separate the rotor from the hub, it that is even possible. Some hubs must be removed from the vehicle, the rotor and hub are all one piece steel, other implementations have a hub that remains in place that has a rotor that can be removed. Usually, the rotor will just slide off. It is held by a retaining screw sometimes, and actually it is held by being clamped between the wheel and the hub by the lug bolts. To get the rotor off, and the hub for that matter, you have to remove the carrier that holds the brake caliper. The hub is further held in place by the wheel bearings.

While you have this stuff apart, you would do well to give all of the splines a good shot with your wire brush to clean any rust or corrosion away. I forget if the slplines should be lubed or left dry -- the question is that the lube will collect and hold stuff that impedes the hub from locking, or if the lack of grease will become the impediment.

Ford's auto locking hubs are a bit tempermental and prone to failure. They are a relatively simple device, but they tend to fail in the locked position and this causes the front drive to be driven by the wheels whenever the vehicle is in motion. The purpose of the auto locking hub is actually to UNLOCK the hub after the 4x4 experience is over. The idea is that the front axle is expensive in terms of fuel consumption to push around, so when 4WD is de-selected then you want the front tires to float -- not push the front drive train and rob you of fuel efficiency. You select 4WD, and the hubs lock without you doing anything, then turn 4WD off and they unlock. The problem is that they don't always unlock, and you will not know most of the time when this happens.

Since you are replacing hubs, it might be a good time in your life to consider the investment in some manually locking hubs. You would set out on your journey, and if a known 4WD opportunity comes up, then stop at any roadside location and lock the hubs before you actually need them. You will be pushing the front axle around, but you can smiply select 4WD on the fly and avoid getting out in the middle of a stream to lock the hubs. You select

4WD on or off throughout the day and ignore whatever state the hubs are in because fuel mileage is not a consideration. At the end of the day you stop one last time and manually unlock the hubs for the highway trip back home.

If you look up the hard-core Bronco guys, you will find that almost all of them have removed the factory auto locking hubs. Some have installed other auto lock hubs, but most just go to manual hubs.

The primary purpose of the auto lock hub is convenience and economy -- Ford thinks it is a selling point that you simply push a button to engage 4WD and don't have to get out and lock the hubs manually, and the US Departmentn of Gasoline Consumption likes auto locking hubs because when you turn 4WD off, the hubs release the front axle so you don't burn gas pushing gears around and around that are not doing anything constructive.

Dump the auto lock hubs.

A Tone Ring is a finely tuned instrument, sorta like a Stone Axe and Hammer. A few nicks here and there don't matter. You have a magnetic pickup (sensor) that is mounted in a location where it can "see" the tone ring as it rotates. The ring has evenly spaced cogs that cause the magnetic pickup to form a square wave (generate pulses). The pulses are fed to the computer where each tire is monitored and compared to the other tires. If the pulse width of any tire becomes longer than the other tires (indicating that one tire is stopping while the others continue to rotate), then the ABS system is activated.

SIDEBAR In an instance where the sensor (magnetic pick up) is used to determine a position, then the "tone ring" on the shaft that the sensor is looking at will have one tooth that is missing. What happens here is that the missing tooth makes a Reference Pulse that the computer then counts the other pulses as they go by. The computer then knows that the reference pulse went by 10 pulses ago, therefore the position must be the reference + 120 degrees, for example. The computer knows that this position is where the #4 piston should be at the top of the compression stroke, and therefore the spark plug should fire. It (the computer) also knows that when the 12th pulse comes, it should arrive within a certain time else there has been a misfire event -- the engine has to go from Position X to Position Y within a specified period (based on engine speed anf throttle position) else the spark event Position X was weak, which is the definition of a misfire. The shape of the square wave is dependent on the speed of whatever shaft is being monitored. A camshaft might have 20 cogs on its tone ring, but the crankshaft will have a ring on the flywheel that is much larger and can have far more cogs.

END SIDEBAR

YOU KEEP SAYING, separate the hub from the rotor, but this is backwards. You are separating the rotor from the hub. The hub may or may not (depending on the design used) remain on the axle when the rotor is replaced. The design might have the hub and rotor be all one piece, or it might allow the rotor to be removed separately. If the rotor/hub is all one piece, then there is no removing the rotor from the hub. But if the rotor can come off, then you separate the rotor from the hub, not the other way around.

Disc Brakes use pads, not shoes. Brake Shoes are used with drum brakes, Brake Pads are used with disc brakes.

I'm not sure I understand what your trouble is, you gave us pictures of a brand new hub/rotor assembly that doesn't need anything more than installation on the truck. Unless, the pics are of the old hub after you cleaned it and mounted the new rotor, in which case you spent far too much time and effort cleaning the hub.

Looks like you got the help you need but I can't help observing that you got your moneys worth out of the existing disks......