I think my front wheel bearing are shot from the noise it's making and the haynes is pretty useless for this.
How involved is swapping out the bearings and do I need any special tools for this?
Oh yeah it's for a stock 95 YJ Dana 30.

its easy once you know the tricks.

I'll try to post up what i know at lunch time today.

Thank you

its pretty easy to do.

remove wheel, brake caliper and rotor from the hub

remove the cotter pin and saftey cover on the end of the hub then remove the nut on the end of the axleshaft that holds it in

there are 3 12 point bolts on the back side of the knuckle that need removed. you will need either a 12 point socket (wanna say they are 14mm?) or a box wrench

what i like to do is find a bolt that its the same thread, slightly longer and thread it in at least 1 diameter of the bolt (probablly 3/8 of an inch) and then beat on the end of the bolt with a BFH

after you hit it a few times, remove the bolt and put in in another hole and repeat. keep moving holes every few hits and slowly work it out.

alternativly, instead of doing the bolt circle thing, take and flip the rotor around and put it on the wheel studs, put 3 or so lug nuts on 1 diameter of the stud and use the rotor kinda like a slide hammer to work the hub out. i've never done it this way but it seems it would work and wouldn't involve finding and then destroying another bolt.

PB blaster is your friend. everything is normally pretty hard to remove the 1st time you do it.

matt probably has a few tricks that i don't know/don't remember anymore. i haven't had anything with unit bearings in almost 4 years.

I'm going to jack it up at lunch and see if I can hear which side is the bad one.
It's a busy weekend for me.
My son's opening night baseball festivities, plus a game, my Mom is coming into town, I have to finish up installing my friends Prizm engine, fix what I think is the bearing on the Jeep, a hockey game, beer drinking, and the wife wants to go to Brown Co.
Now should I do the U joints on the axles at the same time and install the locker....uggghhhhh
Can someone add 24-36 hours to the weekend... anyone... Bueller?

if you're thinking of doing it this weekend, start spraying all of it with PB blaster.

74_J10 wrote:

PB blaster is your friend. everything is normally pretty hard to remove the 1st time you do it.

I've found heating up the affected area with a torch (i use a map gas torch) and then spraying it down it PB blaster is the most effective.

Without a doubt at least soak it in PB if you don't have a heat source. But I'd pick up a MAP gas torch if you don't have one... I've found tons of uses for it...

We did this over the weekend, due to a broken axleshaft, bolt the wheel up to the unit bearing and use it as leverage, and it is a 13mm 12 point socket. Also put some anti-sieze on the surface of the knuckle and unit bearing when you put it back together. We had it off and went to the junkyard and were back on the trail in 3 hours so not too bad.

Oh and we replaced the whole outer/unit bearing/inner assembly to save time of swapping u-joint and the ears of the inner were not in great shape, but we fould the nut on the end of the axleshaft to be the worst part of the job, another reason we left it alone and installed the whole assembly from a junkyard cherokee.

I'll have to use the map gas, since my friend used up all the gas for my torches unless I can get them filled before the weekend.
I'll be hitting it with the PB for a few days. Great weekend project... I wonder if it's easier to just change the whole axle.. anyone with an axle with 4.10's?

Thank you for all the tips and suggestions.

I did not mean to imply we changed the whole axle, just the driver side inner and outer shaft, the outer shaft was attached to the unit bearing with that spindle nut, which we could not break loose with tools we had on the trail.