wheel bearings

[digglesworth]

So how would I know if the wheel bearings were wearing out? I've got 80000 on my 06 and have aftermarket rims. I'm not positive of the offset/backspacing without looking them up bet they stick out a few inches more than stock. I've got a bad shake driving down the highway. Sometimes it's worse than others. I haven't jacked up the front end to pull and pry on stuff but visible inspection shows the bushings are all dried out and cracking. I'm gonna start getting upper arms and lower bushings/ball joints to replace worn out stuff but since I have the aftermarket wheels I'm wondering about the excess wear put on the hubs...

 

[954paulo]

Lift the truck up off the ground and try to shake the wheel from the top of the tire. Vertical play will mean the wheel bearing is bad or going. Have someone shake it and look from under neath the truck where the axle meets the hub and see if there is play/ metal strings/shavings

Pretty easy to replace it. Took me 30 minutes to swap the hub assembly.


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[digglesworth]

Thanks. So youre looking at an isolated spot where the axle meets the hub? Can't worn ball joints or bushings cause movement like that too? Guess you just gotta pay attention to where the play is coming from... I'm not too thrilled about having to drop all the cash for a-arms, bushings, ball joints and possibly hubs... Guess it just comes with the hummer territory... :banghead:

 

[digglesworth]

I found hubs from a place. www.discountbodyparts.com they are $68/each. They don't say a brand name. Also found a-arms from a couple places for around $170/pair... Has anyone used any of these "off brands" as replacements? Are the adequate replacements for oem? Going to gmpartshouse or similar site will break me for sure...

 

[Reloader]

Typically a wheel bearing going bad will be noisy and or produce some vibration at speed. They can do this with no looseness also. I've seen wheel bearings be a loose goose and make no noise at all. Feathered tires will mask bearing noise and simulate vibration making it hard to diagnose. If tires are smooth and while driving straight there is little or no noise/vibration you can veer slightly right or left and noise and or vibration become apparent, this can indicate a defective bearing. Noise/vibration while veering left usually indicates a bad right bearing as the weight shifts to that wheel and makes bearing noisy. Vise versa for other side but this can fool you.
The best way I have found is to raise car on hoist and spin each wheel individually by hand and lay a hand on that wheels coil spring. The coil spring acts as an amplifier of vibrations and makes it easy to find bad bearing. Unfortunately our H3s don't have coil springs so this procedure doesn't work well but you still may be able feel some looseness by placing a finger between the outer cv joint housing and the knuckle and have someone move wheel slightly in and out at 12 and 6 o'clock positions. You should be able to feel movement if its loose at all. If one bearing has noise and or looseness the other one may not be far behind as they both turn the same amount of revolutions.

 

[Reloader]

Be careful using white box bearings as you may have to get 2 of them to get one good one. Can't go wrong with Timken .

 

[digglesworth]

Thanks for the info reloader.... I'm guessing I'll replace all the bushings, a arms and ball joints first along with the tie rods and rack mount and see if the shimmy goes away... I don't notice any noise as of yet. Just tryin to find possible reasons for the shimmy...

 

[Reloader]

What shape are your tires in? Have you had them balanced recently? Tires get balanced bad all the time. Balancer not calibrated properly, wrong type weights used and come off, operator doesn't know **** from shinola how to balance. Possible separation in tire causing tire to deform a little at speed, tyre out of round, bent rim. All of this can be intensified by worn suspension components.
You would be surprised how many so called tire techs just keep pounding on more weights rather than break bead and rotate tyre 180 degrees on rim and rebalance. Most of the time you can reduce the amount of weight needed. Another good practice in balancing tires is to use 2 one ounce weights instead of 1 two ounce weight. That way if you loose one only half the weight came off.

 

[alrock]

I'd be focused on balancing or even a bad tire way before bad bearings for the symptoms you describe. Also, if a tire rocks up and down when you're on a lift, I think you're looking at ball joints before you look at the bearings. As Reloader said, you'll probably notice a noise or a higher speed vibration with bad bearings, vs. a bad ride as I think you are describing. How many miles on your tires?

 

[digglesworth]

Not sure Alex. They were on it when I got the truck early spring... They look like they don't have a ton on them... However, they are geotrac patagonia A/Ts. Not a brand I've ever heard of before... When I first got the truck, I cranked the torsion bars and got an alignment and had em balance all 4 tires. There is a crap load of wheel weights on one spot leading me to believe the tires don't balance well... I just figure with 80000 miles now, the bushings could probably use replaced...

 

[Chook]

X2 with the wheel balance is most likely the issue esp with tyres 33" or larger. Mine was balance whe I went to 35" and in the course of balancing them they found the steering rack issue & my aftermarket wheels needed hub rings. As an easy test, rotate you tyres first and see if the symptoms change.

 

[digglesworth]

I made an appointment for Wednesday at the dealer that just did my transmission flush. They do the "road force" balancing where it measures imperfections in the tire and balances accordingly. It also measures the pull in each tire and tells them where to put each tire on the vehicle. Seems pretty in-depth and the best tire balancing service around... Of course it better be decent for $90. Hopefully the tech can give my ball joints and bushings a once over too....

 

[954paulo]

Btw. My wheel bearing was bad and I had no odd vibrations. Nothing really screaming out to be checked. Just a slight pull in one direction and then a small grinding noise from the brake shield hitting the rotor. But that was slight and only some times. I thought maybe bad brakes or a pin got loose or even ball joint. Nope it was the hub. And I ebayed an offbrand. Problem solved.


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[digglesworth]

I cant seem to find info on the hub rings specific to my application. does anyone know what the inner diameter (the H3 hub flange)? I cant find what the center bore of my aftermarket rims are either. I emailed eagle alloy so hopefully I get a response. ive heard mixed reviews about the hub rings. some say yes. some say no. what I got out of it was that the lugs acorn design centers the rim (lugcentric) where using the rings uses the hub to center the rim (hubcentric). hubcentric appears to balance easier and perhaps more accurately and be stronger than lugcentric. my problem with that is my center caps are a "slide through" design so if I put hub rings in the back of the rim, the center caps wont be able to be used. I can probably find some "snap in" styles that I could use but it may be trial and error to find ones that fit. if I find the center bore of the rims, it may make it easier... its one thing after another with this d@mn H3....

 

[alrock]

PM Bigunit, he may have some info on hub centric rings. He has some for his aftermarket rims.

 

[digglesworth]

Will do...

 

[Happy Hummer]

Ill n'th that....
Balance, rotate and check for ball joints.
Chris

 

[WolfenH3]

Best advice I ever had was to do the easiest thing first.....from my Dad! I just had an issue with real fine tight vibration (like a vibrater on the steering wheel) at 40 to 50 mph... then it was gone.. smooth up to 85mph. I also had a very "loose" bouncing front end only when going over bumps. Now with 18 years experience in Jeeps, with solid front ends and 35" tires, I knew it was either ball joints, and possibly bearings. I took the advice of my Dad and another forum member Zach and went and had the tires balanced. All 4 were out, drivers rear was the worse with no weights and needed 4oz I think it was. It also needed an upper control arm as the ball joint was so bad, the tire was leaning almost 2" when lifted off of the ground. Tech would not let me drive it that way. $150.00 later, it rides as nice as a Cadillac! I cannot describe how much better it rides and handles at ALL speeds. About a week later I added Monroe reflex shocks and now it rides better than a Cadillac. All parts are original and I have 65,000.00 miles on it. Moral of the story: think easy and simple first, and don't over think it. I have however seen the Timken bearing hubs for $92.00 on a few sites online. Hope its something simple like mine was!! Best of luck to you.:thumbs:

 

[digglesworth]

I appreciate it wolf... Hopefully I'll know more after Wednesday. I've got a constant list going of things I want/need to do and it's constantly being shuffled around cause things like this come up...

 

[WolfenH3]

I hear ya....I pissed off my son in law by trading my Jeep in for my Hummer (he is a hard core jeeper and despises Hummers), just done with the 20 years of jeeping....in any event, I must say a lot LESS issues with the 3 jeeps I have had...then what are, or could be "potential" issues with the Hummer. Normal maintenance is one thing, but some of the issues seem to be engineering flaws in my book....maybe that was the "real" reason GM stopped making them? I suppose we will never know....Let me know how you make out.

 

[digglesworth]

Yeah. My plan is to take care of a lot of these "issues" before I run it through the paces. I don't want to get stuck somewhere cause one of the under-engineered components failed. Most of the issues have been addressed and lots of them remedied by members on this forum... Steering rack, diff bushings, etc.... I don't know if my truck will ever be complete in my eyes but I love my H3 and will keep defending it to all the haters out there.

 

[Bigunit]

PM Bigunit, he may have some info on hub centric rings. He has some for his aftermarket rims.

digglesworth,
I run a set of 17x9 moto metal 951s w/35" MT KM2s on my H3T when I go offroading. Before I started using the hub centric rings, I had a constant wheel wobble that I could not get rid of. After I started using the rings, the wobble completely went away and I have been running hub centric rings on my H3T ever since for about 3 years now.

The key to finding out the right size (ID/OD) of hub centric rings for you, is to find out the center bore size of your Eagle alloy 137s. The H3/H3T's axle hub bore is 100.6mm. It seems that the hub bore size of the after market wheels for the H3/H3T have either a 108 or 106 hub bore. So, I bought two sizes for my Moto metal wheels because I wasn't 100% sure which would fit better - 108 OD/100.6 ID http://www.justforwheels.com/index.jsp?ID=100.6&OD=108&sub=ringsresults&cat=hubcentric and 106 OD/ 100.6 http://www.justforwheels.com/index.jsp?ID=100.6&OD=106&sub=ringsresults&cat=hubcentric - the 108/100.6 rings were too big and the 106/100.6 fit perfectly.

The other key is to narrow down the potential sources that could lead to wheel wobble. It looks like you well on your way to doing just that. In addition, some will argue that these do rings do not make any difference on the H3/H3T because of the hub design, but I will say that on my non-OEM moto metal wheels, the rings solved my wobble issue. I still have the unused 108/100.6 rings sitting in my tool box, so once you can confirm the hub bore size of your Eagle 137s, let me know if they are 108mm and you can have my set for free. If you need help finding the hub bore size for your Eagle 137s, PM me the size and model # of your wheels and I can try to find out for you.

 

[digglesworth]

The center cap that slides through the center bore from the back measures 107.6mm so that leads me to believe the center bore of the rim is 108 cause they slide through easily but not banjo-tight...

 

[954paulo]

Yup 108 is it


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