ratcheting sound coming from drivers side hub

[jonathon]

On my '91 Burb I noticed that lately, when I drive with the hubs locked in on pavement(but not in 4wd of course), I get a ratcheting sound coming from the drivers side. 4wd does work, but the sound is annoying and probably a problem.. Would a problem with the lockouts cause this? Or am I looking at something like spindle bearings?

 

[pauly383]

Gonna have to take it apart and look . Ofcourse check the lockouts first since they are there . Pull the outers and look at the spindle bearings and look at the front joints and stubs . And pull the inners and front cover and make sure its clean and the caps are tight , and no teeth are missing on anything .

Obvously not anything that will go out in 2wd , so keep it out of 4wd until you tear it down . Don't want it to be serious and take out a ball joint .

 

[jonathon]

Gonna have to take it apart and look . Ofcourse check the lockouts first since they are there . Pull the outers and look at the spindle bearings and look at the front joints and stubs . And pull the inners and front cover and make sure its clean and the caps are tight , and no teeth are missing on anything .

Obvously not anything that will go out in 2wd , so keep it out of 4wd until you tear it down . Don't want it to be serious and take out a ball joint .

That's kind of what I figured.. looks like I'll be tearing the front down earlier than expected(need to have it fixed before Christmas, usually our first snows). The good news is I have the '89 to practice on since I'll be tearing it down over thanksgiving

Will one of these(click me) be helpful for installing the bearing races? I need to do the wheel bearings in the 89 and might as well get all the right tools since I've got 3 vehicles that'll use them.

 

[pauly383]

Thats a lot better than some of the tools I have used before .

Nowadays I am lazy , if a race goes bad , I grab another hub and rotor assembly from my stack of spares and slap it on LOL