What do you think?





On a serious note, Thanksgiving weekend I started getting a roar from the front of my Dakota that I could feel as well as hear. I didn't have time to look at it until today. My daily commute isn't far, and the hub never got hot, so, I just lived with the noise for a few weeks.

As soon as the bearing cleared the rotor, it just fell apart like you see it. I didn't see any damage to the race or spindle luckily.

Earlier this year when I first bought the truck, I repacked the wheel bearings, and this one looked like it had been soaking in water, the grease was all brown and milky (aside from the grease, the bearing looked fine). I couldn't find a new bearing locally, so, I cleaned everything, and repacked it with the intentions of changing it out in a week when my ordered bearings arrived..

As usually happens, a week became months until I finally couldn't put it off anymore.

Replaced all four bearings, rides nice and tight now, not to mention a lot smoother too....

If you didn't replace the race that bearing rode on, you will be doing it again. To go a step farther, if you replaced all your bearings, I hope you replaced all the races as well. The bearings and races are sets that wear into each other. You can't replace 1/2 of the bearing/race set without running into issues. And now that you have run the new bearings on the old races, I would replace the new bearings when you replace the races, as well! Gene

I understand your point Gene, but, you know what? Unless the race was damaged, I've never changed them out and I've never had an issue. And I'm talking vehicles that went 50K or more this way.

If this happens to be the exception, I figure the rotors will need to be replaced by that time anyway.

As an aside, the bearings I installed were the first set I ever bought where races didn't come with them. When I ordered them, there was no option with or without race.

I have replaced many wheel bearings on old undamaged races without a problem.

I guess maybe I've just had bad luck with bearings then. Every time I have put a new bearing against an old race, it went bad in a short time.

Sounds about right, if something weird is going to happen, it will probably happen with me. LOL! Gene

A race is cheap. Do what you want but drive out to west Texas on that old race? Man spend the 10 bucks extra and be done with it.

I'd do it.

Back about 20 yrs ago, I had a '76 Club Cab that I did the same thing with, just replaced the wheel bearings. Six months later, I loaded up my truck and moved to Phoenix, AZ. Oh, yeah, I lived in MA at the time.

Drove the truck from MA to AZ, spent close to a year in AZ before coming here to TX. Shortly after coming to TX, I took a trip up to TN to see a friend, then came back to TX. By this time the rotors were shot, and I installed new rotors with fresh bearings and races.

This truck was my ONLY means of transportation during this time. The ONLY real issue I had during all those miles was a (Firestone) tire split its belt. The hubs never ran hot, the bearings didn't turn to powder, the sky didn't fall.....

Dumb luck?