Front Wheel Bearings

[jage]

Originally Posted by TwinStick

For those with non-serviceable "unit bearings" in the front, check this out. I have not done it yet, but plan to some day. Just trying to help out.

http://www.dodgetalk.com/forums/showthr ... ost3820117

The best part of this is the siggy, "Drive a Hybrid, I need your Gas!"

[simplesez]

This is such a good thread on front wheel bearings. Doing them this weekend. Getting ready for winter adventures!

[shenrie]

..wishing mine were serviceable

[longboardguy]

Reviving an old thread....

The question about knowing when, (before it is too late), to replace the Quigley non-serviceable hubs isn't clear to me. The bearings won't last forever.

What can I look for now to know if is time to replace them?
When will I know it that is too late?



New hubs to fit the 2006 from Quigley are approx. $500 with shipping.

I have 150K freeway miles on the van and still on the original hubs and bearings. Having a failure in the middle of nowhere would be a little inconvenient.


Has anyone experienced a Quigley front bearing failure with the Non-serviceable hubs?

[shenrie]

for the price of 1 Quigley hub i replaced my 2 fronts hubs with stock f350 units from timkin, and bought a 10.5 sterling lsd rear axle from an 05 f350.

for the price of the second hub i put the 500 bucks went towards fabwork/parts and install of the new axle. granted i get a good deal since i have good friends with fab skills, shop and tooling. so at least half that went towards new wheels since my bolt pattern had to change to 8x170. it was a big chunk of change to suck up. however the way i look at it is i can get a replacement hub unit from anywhere and bolt it on myself and not need any machine work like the Quigley hubs require. plus who knows if they have them in stock ready to go when you break down.

another huge factor was never having to worry about my rear semi float axle breaking and having an expensive tire/rim combo bouncing to the bottom of a huge gorge and leaving me falling off of or stranded on the edge of a cliff. i may still break an axle, but at least now the wheel wont fall off if i do.

[brushogger]

Which year did Quigley switch to unit bearings, and why would they be different than stock Ford?

[REF]

It’s a Ford thing, Quigley just uses Ford front ends from F series trucks. Ford used unit bearings in all of their axles if I’m not mistaken from ‘99 on. You could certainly replace the unit bearings preemptively with new ones, which is better than waiting for a failure. From what I’ve heard, once there are signs of failure, noise or otherwise, you don’t have long before the whole thing goes, leaving you stranded. I replaced my unit bearings with Dynatrac’s free spin hub kit and their heavy duty ball joints a few years ago at about 150K miles, a better option, but more $ up front.


'03 Ford E350 7.3L Diesel
SMB RB50 w/CCV top
Quigley 4X4 w/Deavers & Agile RIP kit

[brushogger]

Thanks for the info. I'll probably just carry a spare UB. They're not that hard to change. I misunderstood one of the above posts. It sounded like Quigley used some proprietary bearing that was very expensive.

[shenrie]

^^^ Quigley uses custom setups. they re-drill 8x170 hubs to 8x165 so they don't have to mess with the rear axle when converting to 4wd. then charge you out the ass for the custom bearing units. this will depend on quite a few things though. mainly what axle they used to convert your specific van. not all quigleys have the setup I mentioned. mine was an 03 with an 03 f350 front axle.

[REF]

Right.....there’s the catch, I forgot to mention the re-drill Quigley does to convert the front hubs to 8X6.5, I had to get my new front frozen rotors re-drilled to fit


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