Hub assembly

[Gr8bawana]

While rotating my tires today I found that the driver side hub bearing sounds "not normal" there is no play yet but the passenger side is silent when I spin it.
Seems you have to replace the entire hub assembly.
Is it as straight forward as it looks, are there any hidden bombs I should be aware of?

 

[Jimmy68]

It's simple. I wanted to come up with some horror story but it's just to easy to swap.
Just pull the diff, put it on the bench and clamp it down. Then heat the housing red hot with a torch before removing the bolts. You want to boil the grease out of the bearing. Cut the diff housing and stick the hub in a hydraulic press. Press it till the bolts snap. Drill those out and rethread for new bolts. Install new hub and weld everything back together. Spray with WD40 and reinstall in your truck.

 

[Gr8bawana]

It's this one at the wheel.

http://www.ramforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=79114&stc=1&d=1477844964

 

[BBartow]

Ram Modifications

 

[Gr8bawana]

Ok guys I'm finally getting around to changing out the hub assembly. After finally getting the 3 mounting bolts to break free using a 3 foot cheater pipe I had to order a 43mm socket for the spindle nut because nobody in my small town had one.
My question is whether the axle shaft is going to be frozen onto the hub assembly and if there is a trick to getting the assembly off the axel?http://www.ramforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=81652&stc=1&d=1482367127

 

[BBartow]

Its a Dodge invest in 5lb sledges
but getting the unit bearing off the knuckle is the hard part. Cover that ***** in antisieze to save your life when you do ball joints. Axle shaft is usually fine.

 

[Gr8bawana]

Well I finally got it done. I broke 2 half inch ratchets, my tourque wrench and my breaker bar trying to get the castle nut off the stub axel. What a pain in the ass. The two auto parts stores with loan a tool programs did not have any impact wrenches.
A guy next to me heard what I was doing and asked where I lived and then he told me he lived about 3 blocks from me and would be right over with his impact gun.
He came over and zapped the nut off in about 3 seconds. He showed me where to give the axel a good whack to break it free from the hub and not screw up the threads, he knew how to get the hub off the knuckle pretty easily. We put the new hub assembly on and he tourqed it down all in about 20 minutes.
He was a complete stranger to me yet he took time out of his day to help me out. In thanks my wife sent a big box of freshly baked xmas cookies and I gave him a big hunk of elk salami which really thrilled him.
While talking to him I found out he grew up on a farm in Iowa and had been in the military with 3 tours to Iraq and suffers from PTSD. I thanked him for his service and for bailing my butt out.
It restores my faith in my fellow man to have an experience like that.