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Cheap eBay manual locking hubs


BamaQX402
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So I bought a set, made a world of differance. But now every so often on the passenger side it's making a buzzing sound for an instant, and once yesterday I was pulling a trailer & when I had to stop suddenly it did it.

Did I waste my money on those? Am I ruining my axle? I have a set of new axles...

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Yeah I didn't add any, it had a pretty good coating on them, I figure once they wear in some it will stop. I need to lock them and see if it persists, just to verify. I made a point to jack it up and try to wiggle tires to check bearings/ball joints, nice and tight.

Thanks

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  • 4 weeks later...

So when I lock these hubs the loud noise stops, however now I do hear a constant faint noise. I believe when I unlock them they allowed the bearings to overclock, thus letting me know it's time for new ones, I bought this off a lot that someone traded in, so I don't have any history. With almost 200K showing and the fact that all the bushings are bout shot, I'll add bearings and go ahead and do the steering while I'm rebuilding the suspension.

Should I go ahead and plan to do rear bearings? I'm not too enthused to pull rear axles...

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On 5/28/2020 at 11:54 AM, BamaQX402 said:

So when I lock these hubs the loud noise stops, however now I do hear a constant faint noise. I believe when I unlock them they allowed the bearings to overclock, thus letting me know it's time for new ones, I bought this off a lot that someone traded in, so I don't have any history. With almost 200K showing and the fact that all the bushings are bout shot, I'll add bearings and go ahead and do the steering while I'm rebuilding the suspension.

Should I go ahead and plan to do rear bearings? I'm not too enthused to pull rear axles...

 

Yeah, if you're hearing a noise when the hubs are locked, it can only be the bearings.

The rear bearings are a bit more work...you can't replace those without disassembling the entire axle shafts.  Might be time for maintenance, but if you can't sense a problem, I'd probably let them slide for now.  It's probably not something I'd do unless you had more things to do while everything was down, like driveshaft u-joints, seals, etc.

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  • 4 months later...

To revisit this & update;

I've been running these locked.

A couple of weeks ago I finally had the chance to rebuild my front end, everything new from the axles out + steering. Well I still have the noise. It had been so long that I didn't think to swap sides, so I did Monday and the noise followed to the drivers side, and that hub had a considerable amount of brass flakes in it. So I'll be shopping for some better manual locking hubs.

Just wanted to warn folks about the $50 generic hubs from eBay.

** Anyone have an extra set they want to sell or trade?**

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