I had to replace the front hub on my 2002 Duramax 2500 yesterday. My truck has one hundred and ten thousand miles on it about half of those were puling some kind of load. Memorial day this year I went to West Virgina and pulled back a 1970 Safari without any trouble. This week when I left work I could hear a grinding in the front end when I jacked the wheel up on the pasengers side it had lots of play in it. After checking the Internet Durmax forum I was surpised to find this is a very common problem not only with Chevy but Ford and Dodge allso. I would like to know how many forum members have had this problem. The wheel hub is a one piece unit with the bearing built in, so you have to buy the whole unit (around $300.00 bucks)
. I did the job myself so at least I saved the cost of labor. If you find yourself in this position there are a couple of tips I can give you.
1. You must have a impact wrench to loosen the bolts they are in super
tight.
2. You also need a large socket to remove the nut from the axle stub I think it is 32mm. The flange bolts are 15mm.
3. Don't try to remove the splined axle stub by hitting it with a hammer you will ruin your CV joint. I sprayed mine with WD40 and let it soak a while.
In the old days we had manual hubs on the old Jeeps and 4x4 trucks with replaceable wheel bearings. Now because we want push button 4 wheel drive and antilock brakes it costs ten times as much to replace a bad wheel bearing, is this progress???
I like the old ways.