Maintenance is key to the survival of your four-wheel-drive vehicle, and thats true whether it spends most of its time on the highway or on the trail. Most of us take care of the big-ticket items when it comes to keeping our rig maintained, but it often is easy to skip the smaller details of proper maintenance. One of these smaller items that literally can bring your next trip grinding to a halt involves not taking proper care of your rigs wheel bearings.
What follows is how to keep those bearings rolling smoothly down the road. Our guinea pig for this story was a Dana 44 axle equipped with ¾-ton outers. But the steps shown here will transfer to most American-made solid axles except late-model axles such as the Dana 50 found in the front of the Ford Super Dutys that use unit bearings. Owners of late-model IFS rigs also are stuck with non-serviceable and expensive unit bearings.
In addition to reading the following story, you should also get a maintenance manual for your 4x4 to make things easier. Armed with the proper tools and knowledge, you will find that taking care of your wheel bearings is easy. Now you have no excuse for not keeping those wheel bearings happy.