Has this happened to anyone else?

[icedragon]

I just had the left front wheel bearing on my 89 k5 suddenly grenade itself and take out the warn locking hub with it. What a bitch getting the wheel off and then the spindle was bunged, had to sand it to smooth it and get the new bearings on. So after $200 in parts and 5 hours on saturday both wheels have been done. New bearnigs/races, new brake pads, new warn hubs and I changed the rear u-joints cuz they were getting worn. My biggest question is how the hell did that bearing let go so quickly without any advance warning ie: squeaking/grinding?

 

[Thunder]

Old age? Too much pre load? Water intrusion? Lack of maintainence? Wrong grease?
**** happens.

 

[tacoma]

YES!

I did that in '98. Started a cross country trip in Charlotte NC, with a greasy hub... or so I thought... made it to Shiprock NM, where the 'greasy hub" that was actually my badly oozing wheel bearing decided to let go. Little jerk of the wheel, just enough time to say "what the fu..." and then it was a wrestling match to the death. When the bearing let 80 (at 80mph or so), the wheel fell on the caliper and boiled all the fluid, so I had about half a pump of brakes and then nothing... so I downshifted, and again, and mashed it into 1st finally (surprised me not to bust the rear end but I bet the next owner did!).
When I got it to the shop, the hub had welded itself together, looked like a hunk of blobby aluminum with some springs sticking out of it. The dial was missing, spindle chewed to hell, caliper gone, rim ganked. I ended up needing everything from the knuckle out, including a stub shaft, because the splines were so jacked up. I also needed some tranny work, because using gears as a brake apparently sucks for the teeth, as I chipped a few.

and new underwear, because that was no fun at ALL. hahahah Guys probably still using that hub as a paperweight.

 

[BlazerFarm]

That happened to me too in 1987 with my '76 K5. I was driving from Arkadelphia, AR to Odessa, TX. I had the exact same experience as Tacoma above. It was the left bearing with me too. There was a light jerk that really got the pucker factor going and gave me time to get my speed down from 70 to about 40 then all holy hell broke loose and then the wrestling match started. I was able to get it off Interstate 20 and into a closed gas station parking lot. About three hours later and two trips into Big Spring and I was back on the road again. I'm just glad I was traveling with another vehicle.

You want to talk hot. The chrome on my Warn hub was now blue, green, yellow, and all kinds of cool colors. The wheel bearings were fused inside the races into chunks that I had to break apart with a BFH and a screwdriver to get them out of the hub.

I paid much more attention to regular wheel bearing maintenance after that.