Hey as most of you know i have an '89 4x4 with manual hubs and manual t-case and tranny, that should be all you need to know for this one. Anyway i got the safety and emissions inspections done and they said my front wheel bearings need to be replaced, not right away, but sometime soon. So i checked in my chiltons manual and it sucks. So im asking you fellas. How hard is it to replace the front wheel bearings, how involved is it, and any ideas on how much it costs to buy some???

 

If you don't get an answer drop me an email and I'll scan my Ford manual for you.

 

Chiltons seems good to me for changing wheel bearings. It's not really difficult. My question is, how did the tech who did your inspection know the wheel bearings were bad? Did he pull the rotors as part of his inspection? In all my years in Utah, no one's ever actually pulled the rotor off to inspect the bearings. I guess I'm wondering if the bearings were just loose and need to be repacked.

 

wheel bearing replace is easy as pie as long as you dont have a bearing that has welded itself on to the axle like mine did then it is a little harder but it goes pretty much this for manual lockouts on b2 `'86
jack up the front
pull wheels
pull off lock outs
pull calipers
remove the little c clamp thing that is in the groove of axle lock out spline ( be careful this thing will fly off like a shot and get lost)
remove those three washer looking things that are between the c clamp and the axle housing
take a socket extension give outter spline nut a tap and remove
then do same on the inner spline nut
then slide rotor and off
then pop out the seals and bearings and replace em.
grease the hell out of put it back togther
have a beer
no sweat.....sounds bad but its not just make sure you keep up with the order everthing goes back. then check it in a few days to make sure it has not loosened up on ya

there are two bearings that fit our trucks so take your rotor with ya to make sure you get the right one.....


good luck
they make a four prong spline nut socket ($20)but you don't really need it unless your spline nut has been heated like mine was

i had some trouble with mine because my son and company drove it around with bad bearings and didn't tell me about any noise or anything until the bearings had broken down and welded themselves to the axle housing i noticed my wheel leaning and found out the bearings were gone it was a big job to get melted bearings off......i have since removed a few of these spline nuts most you can grab em and turn em off with your bare hands


ggod luck

 

Hey shorty, the tech that did my inspection pulled the wheel off and told me i needed new brake pads. Since they were under warranty i took it to the place that did all my brakes ($800 worth, they did ALL The brakes) and they told me that my bearings were going out. So where are you in utah anyway? Im in Kearns, if you dont know, thats in salt lake. And to you other guys.. thanks so much for the info. Thats really really gonna help me out a ton when i get around to doing it next week probably.

 

I'm in Utah county.

If they had the rotors off, they should have been able to tell if the bearings were bad. How much additional did they quote you to replace the bearings? Shouldn't have bee too much more, because almost all of the labor in replacing the bearings is removing the rotors (as described above), which (I'm assuming) they had already done. In any case, that's in the past, can't do much about it now.
Did they indicate that the spindle was still in good shape?

 

they didnt say anything about the spindle so i assumed it was fine. They didnt bother to tell me the bearings were bad until one of the guys was already driving it around the block to check the new pads, so there would have been labor. Besides that, i hate that place. I was never going to go there again but i figured one more time wont be too bad if its free.