redfishtd

I guess I would try a junk yard axle spindle assembly , what ever its called . Its been awhile since I have been in there .
I am currently helping my young renter with a noise in his 2001 f150 4wd left front hub . We tore it apart it, seems his brother in law just changed his cv joint out and left the back hub nuts finger tight, the rotor was ruined and nothing was torqued . His brother in law was there and I thought I saw smoke coming out of my renters ears as we found the problem but he held his tongue . Self checking is a must , the older I get the less I trust myself .
I have big sockets and big torque wrenches . He has a baby and is strapped . Like most young fellows he doesn't see the importance of torquing stuff . I find it scary as his wife is driving the baby around in that truck while he works out of town .

nrivera04

It is actually just a double straight roller bearing. They are not tapered cones.

HubFord

It's correct, this guy installs it.

Stinger23

Yeah, as you can see, it's a pretty simple process, not much that can be screwed up. Jacking up the truck and taking the wheel off takes longer than removing the bearing/rotor. The time consuming part for me is I don't have a press so I have to set up a time that my neighbor (who works in a machine shop) can press the bearing out/in for me. I'm tired of asking him to do this and I'm sure he's tired of me asking.

Stinger23

My issue with this, besides the cost and time/difficulty in changing that out (not super difficult but certainly a couple hours of work) is that the truck has never been crashed, the original bearing went 180k miles with that spindle, and there is nothing that indicates that the spindle is bad. I think swapping rotors side to side should prove that. I haven't done it yet though.

nrivera04

When I had my 2wd, I used rotors amd spindle nuts from Napa and had no issues until I totaled the truck about a year and a half later. The only thing I did different, was torque the nut to 250 cause that's all I could get out of my wrench. I was assured by a well trusted mechanic that 250 was more than sufficient. Hope you can get it licked!

Stinger23

To update the progress on this (after not messing with it over the holiday). In an attempt to verify all of the things I "know" are true, I swapped rotor assemblies side to side so the "bad" one is on the driver's side now. The noise followed the bearing/rotor which confirms that it's not a tire rubbing or an ABS ring rubbing or anything else on that side of the truck that's causing the noise. The noise was also there immediately which eliminates the possibility that the noise was never "fixed" before but rather just took a while to return after things were removed/installed for each bearing swap.

So the only thing it doesn't eliminate is if there is something on the passenger side that is causing the bearing failure. So to check that, I'm driving it at least 50 miles with the rotors swapped side to side to see if the "good" bearing starts making noise. These aren't highway miles either, it's going to be all roundabouts and turns and such that put side load on the bearings. I'm up to about 25 miles so far with no noise from the passenger side.

Once the above test is complete, I think the next thing I'll do is swap in the one good original bearing I have that I replaced on the driver's side. I'll install it to replace the current "bad" bearing and run it on the driver's side. If it starts making noise, I'll know it's something weird with the rotor that's causing the issue and I'll swap in some new rotors (since that will be the ONLY thing on the driver's side that's not original to that side and that side has never made noise/killed a bearing before).

nickers1952

I don't mind telling you that this one of the strangest issues I have heard of in 4 decades of building/fixing/breaking/racing - cars/trucks/motorcycles/boats... PLEASE let us know what the fix is. Good luck...

Stinger23

Trust me, I know. I've been wrenching for a little over 25 years now and this is certainly an odd one. My mechanic buddies are all scratching their heads at this as well.

At this point it's a personal mission to figure it out without just throwing a bunch of money at it. There is a good chance I'll end up cutting one of the bad bearings apart, and measuring the bearing bore in the rotor to see if it's out of round or something.

nickers1952

A key point to me is that you had thousands of miles on the setup with no problem, then just by changing bearings everything goes south. No damage to any components that would be a cause.... I could see a bad bearing, but 2 sets?? impossible. Only other thing that comes to mind would me to measure the spindle and rotor bore for being out of round, as you indicated. This is a true case of live and learn (hopefully!)