Hello again. I have a '93 F-150 with manual lockout hubs. I replaced my front wheel bearings about 6 months ago. The driver's side bearing was completely dry and shot. I think it got so hot that the grease sort of congealed in the hub and was a mess to clean. Anyway, fast forward to today. I hear a very slight noise coming from the front end, and it's especially noticeable driving next to sound walls or barriers. It sounded like the shield behind the rotor was rubbing against the rotor, as it wasn't consistently there and varied with speed.

I removed the wheel and everything seemed OK. I removed the brakes to check how freely the wheel spun and if I still heard the noise. Nope, not there. Putting my ear close to the hub, I could hear slight mechanical noise. I removed the cap and was greeted with a sight I hadn't seen before. There was rust over the axle and other ferrous parts within the hub. I've attached an image to illustrate what I encountered. I haven't checked the passenger side due to it being later on the east coast.

Up until this last time, i would put a fair amount of grease within the hub assembly. The mess created last time made me re-think that, as most of those parts wouldn't be under any heat stress or need lots of lubrication. Could that be the issue, or is it possibly something deeper than that? I'm not 100% familiar with the axle assembly and if there's a seal behind it that could be compromised. Any help is appreciated.

 

You can take a wire brush and clean all of that off, then clean out the hub and bearings, repack the bearings, and close it up and be good to go.


There's three seals you want to check. There is a hub seal between the hub and lockout, a spindle seal that protects the spindle bearings, and an outer axle seal that goes on the inner side of the hub assembly. If any of those seals are bad, replace them.


When reassembling, don't worry so much about filling the entire hub with grease. The bearings need to be packed well, but that's really all it needs. No need to cram an entire tube of grease in there.

 

Thank you for the reply. It appears that the problem is the concentric o-ring around the lockout mechanism's cap. Now the hard part. I'm off to a local hardware store to try and find one. I've been doing couple local auto parts stores and they don't carry anything like it.