2016 3500 front wheel bearing

[mtofell]

its a unit bearing not the whole front end. do you know what a unit bearing is?

first hit on Google with the question - "what is a unit bearing?"

A unit bearing is a completely sealed, non-serviceable unit. When the bearings wear out, you have to replace the entire live spindle. If we look just at the spindle and bearing assemblies, the advantage of a unit bearing is that you never need to pack the wheel-bearings with grease or replace seals.

The words NON-SERVICEABLE are quite interesting in the current context.

 

[Iron Outlaw]

I had to Google it because I always just referred to them as sealed bearings. I was referring to the need to replace u joints, ball joints, tie rod ends along with the "unit bearings"

 

[62Blazer]

I don't want to sound like an armchair mechanic and it's hard to diagnose issues by one picture....but that one picture does make it look like there was an issue for quite sometime before it actually failed. Based on the wear/rub marks and other damage it looks like the tire and wheel assembly was wobbling and rubbing components for awhile before it actually failed.

On one hand I wouldn't expect a wheel to fall off at 70k-ish miles but I also try to do at least a basic inspection and maintenance on my trucks to catch these things. I've replaced front wheel bearings on two vehicles in the last 6 months after finding some wobble in the wheel when inspecting them (no issues or indications while driving otherwise).

For the comment about nobody ever mentioning wheel bearing issue on this forum, just keep in mind there may be 90,000 members on this board (see Forum Statistics) but Ram sells over 1/2 million Ram trucks every single year. If you look at the number of Rams sold in the US over the last 10 years and then assume that each member represents 1 truck, that means that less then 2% of the trucks made in the last 10 years are presented on this forum.

 

[Clewis9593]

Just as a counterpoint,my old truck was 97 1500 with 290,000 miles on it when I traded and the drivers side was the original and as far as I could tell would have gone more still no slop in it.