Posted by Caleb in Manhattan KS [70.184.232.53] on Wednesday, March 11, 2015 at 10:20:11 :
I found a local shop to rebuild my axles. He will use my parts so I can avoid the markup but he quoted me $900 in labor on the front axle alone due to the likelihood of the unit bearings being rust welded into the knuckles. He also told me that if I wanted to break everything down and bring the axle to him that the number would change drastically.
Glad I did it myself, it only took a couple of solid taps on the bolts for the driver side bearing to get the housing popped loose from the knuckle, shot some PB into the joint, then worked around it with a pry bar and got it out in about 15 minutes. The passenger side was a different story...took me about 2 hours tapping the bolts and working around the perimeter of the bearing housing just to get a little opening to get the PB into the joint. Once I got it moving around a little, the PB worked into the joint and it started coming right out.
I spoke with a friend of mine that has worked on several of these trucks and he has had to do anything from torching out the bearings so he can cut the housing with a sawzall, to pulling the entire assembly out and using his 40 ton press at the farm to press them out of the knuckle...generally with spectacular separation.
I guess I got lucky, these unit bearings were installed 2 owners ago at 135,000 miles using no anti seize. Im at 251,000 miles and they are quiet and smooth as can be. I will be applying a generous amount of anti seize when they go back together...once I clean the bearing housing and bore back up. I use the permatex (I think) copper anti seize, is there anything better for this application?
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