How bad can a front hub be?

[tahiti350]

How bad can front hubs get before they self destruct? The '92 FWD wagon I bought has both hubs bad. Drivers side has lots of free play/slop, and the passneger side feels like the bearings are actually gone. P.O. used it to tow a 12' fiberglass boat, and beat on it some, from what I hear from his friends.

I went ahead and put the axles back in and put the brakes on (P.O. had stripped a bunch of stuff since the "trans main bearing" was bad). I put it together so I could drive it a little to check the trans and stuff out before I start putting any money into it.

Also, is there any problem using ABS front hubs on a non-ABS car? Thats what my parts wagon and the sedan at the wrecking yard have. I figure i'll just remove the wheel speed sensors, and should be good to go?

[kimokalihi]

I had 3 bad wheel bearings on my 90 legacy wagon AWD 4EAT. I just went to the junkyard and bought the whole hub assemblies for $25 each since the dealership wanted $1,400 to replace the bearings and I paid $400 for the whole car. One of the hubs I bought had a bad bearing in it and had to be replaced again but for $100 I replaced all the bad ones and it was much quieter and smoother after that and didn't have to pay the man $1400.

It's pretty easy to do also. Only hard part is getting the bottom bolt out of the lower control arm. It was always rusted in hard core. It's difficult to get out without destroying the boot on the bolt. I forget what that bolts called.

My bearings were so bad the guy who sold me the car told me the rear end was bad and needed to be replaced. The rear end was fine.

[Buffman]

you mean balljoint if you're talking about the front?

The one on the back of my wagon was pretty bad. It wasn't completely destroyed but the bearings were in bad shape, and the outer race assembly had pieces cracked off of it somehow.


THe bearings aren't hard to do, but you need a shop press to press hub from bearing, and then press bearing from steering knuckle, then reverse. I guess that's one reason I like Gm hubs. Unbolt the hub bearing assembly with 3/4 bolts after removing brakes and drive axle nut. Pull hub out (might require a little force), then install new one. One nice little package

[tahiti350]

I'm planning to just replace the entire hub assy with a set of ABS hubs, only like 6 bolts per side... plus the axle, of course.

[Buffman]

that's the easy way to do it

[Bdub]

Just replace the whole hub. So much easier.

Also, a good balljoint puller will separate the hub from the control arm. I just replaced an original 91 balljoint a couple months ago, and the puller separated them with relative ease. Just stand clear when it pops it out, the puller nearly took my head off as it pulled the two apart.

[woodrat]

The first time I pulled my transmission, I had to fight with the rusted up bolts on the ball joints and the ball joints spinning when trying to take the nuts off. I just bought new ball joints, they were less than $20 each at the import parts house.

Replacing the hub bearings was a snap, but I do have a small press in the shop. I would do those all day long for $1400/pair!

[tahiti350]

When I swapped out my hubs I undid the bolt that holds the ball joint in the hub, and left it in the lower control arm... Much easier that trying to get the ball joint unseated.