You know on the more modern trucks they have unitized hubs on them? The hubs only have dust seals in them and enough grease to keep them running for a while but its set up to fail. Well, people think you cant pack them. Wrong. You can go to NAPA and buy their chrome air blower with the rubber tip. All you really want is the tip. Unscrew it and put an 1/8" pipe coupler on it. Take the grease fitting off of your grease gun (hand pump grease gun not air) and thread the coupler/tip on to it. Now take your vehicle apart and pull the ABS sensor. Use Kendall Super Blue 427 grease. That looks like what is in every bearing I have taken apart. Dont mix another grease. When you get the sensor out, put the rubber tip in the sensor hole and start pumping. Now you have a seal on the inside and outside. that you need to watch for grease. Pump until you just see like a sweat coming out of the dust seal, not oozing out mind you, and stop pumping. You have to keep looking at both seals because one will let it out sooner than the other. As a rule of thumb, a 1500 takes about 32 to 36 pumps on an average, a 2500 takes anywhere from 65 to 80 pumps. Once you see the grease at the seals, Remove the rubber tip from the abs hole, rotate the hub one revolution and let the hub push out some grease thru the sensor hole. Now take a screwdriver and go in the hole, angle it so its going against the direction of rotation, till you hit the commutator inside. When you feel it, lift the screw driver up a little and rotate the hub so more grease comes up the screwdriver. Now finish cleaning the sensor hole by pulling as much grease out as you can and install the sensor. You have just packed your sealed hub. This works with any vehicle that has the abs sensor in the hub and any make. You can see pics of the proceedure at Courtsara :: Tips

 

If you see grease coming out the seal it is over packed.
There types of bearings are not intended to be 100% packed.
Most large industrial bearings only need about 30% filled or overheating can occur.

 

You are right and if you don't have an air pocket that will occur. If you are doing a lot of mud bogging it keeps water out. I have checked my hubs with a lasor temp sensor and have only seen 20 to 30 degrees difference.

 

It'll work good for a mud truck but I don't recommend filling it that full for a truck that sees lots of highway miles. There has been a rightup on the TDR site about a guy drilling and tapping his hubs for a grease fitting and giving them a couple pumps every oil change. He is/was a over the road hot shot driver and replaced several hub assemblies and got many more miles with the greasable ones.

 

Dan...do you have a link for that? I would be interested in reading. What kind of temps are you thinking are over heating? I drove my Duramax to Minnesota, pulling a trailer, then over to South Dakota, then back to Florida, over 5000 miles in a 2 week period. I dont see any thing happening other than some residue around the dust seal areas. I drove the truck at 70 mph the whole time and as a matter of fact drove 60 miles at 70 when I did the sensor readings. And that was on a 91 degree day. I am not experiencing the over heat doing it the way I described. Or are you saying those temps that I posted are considered over heating?

 

One more thing I would like you to check out. I posted some pics on my website showing how I am getting the air pocket. I would be interested on you views. also there is some other info on there you might find interesting. Courtsara :: Home

 

Sorry don't have a link and it was an older thread so only members can see it that far back. Since I sold my Dodge I don't have a membership either. He did drill a hole in the knuckle for the grease zerk to be reached, that I do recall.

You mentioned a 20-30* temp difference but to what?
It may be that the front wheel bearings aren't under enough load and speed to overheat from packing them. My uncles Dmax ate a hub at 100K, so loose it rubbed the rotor on the backing plate. My K3500 had one go out before 100K, many failures in S10s so if you drive a lot and get well over 100K without failure it could be seen as long term move in the positive direction.

I've thought about contacting the bearing manufacturers and find out exactly what specs the grease needs for compatablilty. Will try and check out your site some more when I get time, I've never really worked on the 2.5Ton and up stuff.

 

20 to 30 Degrees at the hub center to the edge of the rotor. You cant really include the rotor because they run warm on their own. As far as the 2.5 ton, I did an F150 the same way. The guy is going to send me a testimonial. It works on everything as long as it has the tapered bearings in the hub.

 

Just wanted to clarify. When I read the temp of the hub before packing on the same 60 mile run they read 117 degrees. When I read them after packing they read 137 and 143 so I just rounded it off to 20 to 30 degrees. I'll tell you what. I will run it this week and check the temps again after I have run it thousands of miles and see what they read. I'll get back to you at the end of next week.

 

Too bad you didn't pack one side first for comparision purposes. Some day I'll get a IR thermometor and then I can check mine. The whole assembly is running hotter so it points towards the bearing generating more heat/friction. Now is it enough at the point of conact to thermally break down the grease? I can't answer that.