Front wheel bearing roar...check my memory!

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JDMopar

JDMopar

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I've got to change the hub/wheel bearing on my wifes Dakota, and just wanting to see if I remember right...making sure which one it is. The roar seems to be coming from the left front. It's been a while since I had to diagnose it, so see if I remember it right. Truck info, is it's an 04 Dakota quad cab, 2WD, 4.7 motor. Going straight, bearing roars.....turn right and it still roars. Going straight with it roaring, and turn left....roar goes away. I'm thinking left side bearings/hub need to be replaced. Am I thinking the right way....or bass ackwards? LOL

:thankyou:
 
Aren't those unitized?


Ah yup, sure are.


PGB PBR930205

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Well luckilly for you it's 2 WD !

Lift the front end, grab the wheel top and bottom and you'll find it quick enough. Worst design in modern history, two bearings an inch apart.. I lost track of how many I've done on the wife's Sport Trac, the 2500Sierra, the 1500 plow truck, wifes GF's Jeep and the list goes on and on. If Dodge are the same as Jeep you'll need the internal style "sockets" vs normal bolt heads to deal with like on GM's and Fords.

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You are thinking correctly. Turning right, the centrifugal force puts pressure on the left front making it growl louder. Sometimes the up/down shake doesn’t prove anything with the sealed hub assemblies. The test drive and left/right turn to load the wheel bearings is quick and easy.
 
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It only depends on which SIDE the noise is loudest on. I've had your "method" fool me a time or two in the past. So whichever SIDE is the loudest is your bad bearing.
 
If one of em is bad, then dollars to donuts the other side aint far behind
 
Do them both so you don't have to deal with the other side in a few months . Whoops ! You beat me to it lol
 
If you ask a general service mechanic what car part he changes the most, it will be wheel bearings. I have replaced hundreds. Louder on right turn, is left bearing.90% of the time. It all depends which row of bearings fail.

sometimes its hard to tell. I jack front end up and spin wheels by hand, and listen with a mechanics stethescope.
 
I put one on my 2000 Dakota at about 130,000.

The other side didn't go out until 165,000.
 
Tooljunkie is right. Jack it up, spin the wheel by hand, you should know right away which one it is. But just do both if you can. Look at video's on You Tube to remove a frozen bearing/hub assembly using the force of the P/S system. It worked like a charm for me.
 
In driving diagnosis, bearing roar gets worse as you apply more pressure on the bearing. Right bearing roars more when turning right. Its always a bit of edumacated guess though. I've ran into 2 cases over the years where both front bearings had some roar, one worse than the other. Replacing the worse one revealed the other. My neighbor recently got it wrong on his Toyota 4 Runner because the roar was a rear bearing. He did say afterwards that turning didn't make a very noticeable difference. Good luck
 
Thanks y'all. It's a 2WD, and the noise goes away turning left. I changed the right side a little over a year ago.....so I'm gonna put the new hub on the drivers side. It's a stupid design, since you can't just put bearings in and be done! Gotta change the whole thing, plus use a new nut because it's a poly lock one time use deal! :realcrazy: Thanks to all for the feedback.
 
You can use the poly-loc again on the right, but I wouldn't do it on the left.

Guess cotter pics were getting too expensive.
 
dartfreak75 said:
They both are hubs but its a different hub. They are not interchangeable
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Not on a GMC trailblazer.. note the splines on the 2WD picture I posted. and I was quoting rammjammer that said they were spindles. No reason to make two different versions for 2 and 4 wheel drive, when both can use the same garbage throw away design.
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dadsbee said:
Not on a GMC trailblazer.. note the splines on the 2WD picture I posted. and I was quoting rammjammer that said they were spindles. No reason to make two different versions for 2 and 4 wheel drive, when both can use the same garbage throw away design.
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Dartfreak and I talking about the Dakota, not a Trailblazer. The Dakota uses two completely different hub assemblies for 4wd and 2wd.
 
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