Hubs still noisy

[03Sport]

Howdy-

So I just changed the hubs on my 2WD Liberty. Seemed like it fixed the bearing noise for a couple days, but now it's back. While I was in there, it looked like the ball joints had seen better days. Could bad ball joints be causing the new hubs to make noise, or did I just get some bad new parts?

Thanks-
Brady

 

[tlrtucker]

I have the same issue, but I just lifted my kj. But ball joint wont make a bearing like noise. The only culprits could be wheel bearings, cv axles on a 4wd, and drive shafts, which again you don't have a front shaft.

What brand wheel bearings did you install?

 

[03Sport]

They were aftermarket hubs- don't know the brand. yeah, I figured it wasn't the joints making noise, but i wondered if maybe bad joints would put additional pressure on the hubs or something..

 

[Luke]

If they are not SKF or Timken ... that could be your problem. The cheap ones don't last very long even if silent at the start.

 

[03Sport]

OK, point taken- but "not lasting very long" should be more than 2 days, shouldn't it?

 

[tlrtucker]

Should be. Years ago I put $40 hubs on my old Chrysler 300M (same general hub assembly design) and literally got about 5k miles out of them before I replaced them.

Just about 100 miles ago I put a Timken on the kj, and it's noisier than the old bearing that went out. Not sure if it's just noisy or a bad part...either way, seems like the best way to fix is with OEM stuff....but others seemed to have luck with Timken

 

[03Sport]

Well, Timken is well-known in the bearing world- not sure about this application in particular, but I guess any manufacturer could have a bad part from time to time. Which could also be true with the ones I installed. Any thoughts on my theory about the bad ball joints contributing to the noise? Joints probably need to be done anyway- just curious if I might be compounding my bearing issue with weak joints...

 

[HoosierJeeper]

Have you checked your U joints?

 

[CactusJacked]

Double check your lug nut torques to make sure none of them worked loose. Loose ones can give you a thunking noise, and eventually worse.
For what it's worth, I've used nothing but Timken bearing hubs (they're the name for bearings), on my Liberty, Wrangler, Vette, Explorer...., and never had a bad one. Mine have been good results, I wouldn't really call it luck.

 

[Porkchop]

No sure how bad your noise is but when was the last time you had an alignment done.

 

[03Sport]

Lug nuts are good- probably does need an alignment, but would like to get the ball joints done first. And I do hear some noise occasionally from the u-joints- mainly when slowing down/stopping and then taking off again. Not always, but sometimes. And that is a different noise than what I'm getting from the hubs. It's got 185K on it and still running strong, but am needing to get some of these issues resolved.