Help! Hub unit bearing grinding

In an effort to find out the source of my steering wheel shimmy, I discovered that the passenger hub unit assembly is making a terrible noise. I propped all 4 wheels up on jack stands, put it in 4-wheel drive, and had my wife press on the gas.

Holy cow... I sure hope that terrible noise is the hub unit. When I pulled the shaft, I can hear and feel a grinding noise when I turn it by hand, so that has gotta be it, right?

Could a bad hub unit cause the front end to shake while driving down the road, just like a tire that is badly out of balance?

I have a '99 XJ w/ 150,000 miles, 35" BFG MTs, with the cast style rotors (this was the year the rotors changed.) I would really like to get high quality hub units, but I would like to avoid having to order them online and wait for them to ship because I want to replace them immediately.

Can you get high quality hub units with a decent warranty from Checker, NAPA, Autozone, etc? I would ideally like to get this done tomorrow, so please post up any input. Thanks.

its a toss up on a part like that from a store like autozone. napa or orielys might be a lil better but if you can i would recommend the dealer on those but they aint goin to be cheap. but at the same time autozone and such places arent goin to be cheap either.

I do believe that Autozone sells Timken bearing hubs, if you ask for them.

The best price I could find for Timkens was on Amazon.com. I think they were $80 each.

if they are anything there like they are here they will have to order them for you and it will be 2 to 3 days out

Hey ive got one thats a little bit loose but doesnt grind that you could have to get you by till you can source a new one. Let me know if youd want it. Im just in centerville so pretty close to you.

I'd borrow one from jimmy as stopgap or buy a whole shaft/unit bearing/ujoint setup from a JY for 30 bucks as a spare, run it till the new one comes in then throw it in the back in case you break on the trail.

And no need to borrow, you can have it free and clear. It made no noise when it came off and could possibly even be pressed tight to take away the little bit of movement.

Don't mean to thread jack here. Needing to do mine as well. What is my best option? Dealer, National, or Timken? I understand they will not be cheep from the dealer. Rockauto has pretty good prices on the National and Timken. Thanks

May as well do them both while you're doing the work. You'd hate to get one fixed then the other one go bad!

CaliXJ said:

Don't mean to thread jack here. Needing to do mine as well. What is my best option? Dealer, National, or Timken? I understand they will not be cheep from the dealer. Rockauto has pretty good prices on the National and Timken. Thanks

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From what i can tell and have seen on here. timken is your best bet. Also i hear that pb blaster or your penetrating solvent of choice and a BFH are your friend when replacing these!

Autozone carries the Timken hub units -- I just bought two there a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure you can find a better price online, but I needed them right then. If you don't run into any snags, you should be able to change one side in an hour.

just did mine yesterday, not bad, on removal use a 3/8 3" extention wedged between the inner c and the stub shaft ear, use the power steering to pop it out.

OK, so here's an update. I decided to just get the job done with new hub units. If figured if I was going to do it, I only wanted to do it once. Like I said earlier, I didn't want to wait for them to be shipped to me, and I'd like to thank Jimmydaux for offering to give me his.

I bought and installed Timken units. They were $99 a piece at Autozone w/ a one year warranty.

I have to say that out of all the many many things that I have done on my XJ, this had to rank as one of the easiest jobs so far. When I was going to remove the old hub units from the shaft, I noticed that the passenger side u-joint had quite a bit of play in it. I didn't want to fix the hub only to find that half the problem was fixed.

Luckily I had some shafts from a '98 XJ that a friend gave me when he installed a Waggy 44 in the front in lieu of his HP 30. I couldn't just pop in the new shafts with the hubs because mine is a '99 and the hub style changed that year.

Anyway, I installed the new Timken hub units on the '98 shafts with the good u-joints, and WOW... I cannot believe how many problems have been resolved! All the noises that were coming from inside the Jeep (rattling, steering wheel shimmy, road noise, front-end shaking, etc.) were all from the worn out hub units and possible the u-joints. I have never had such a repair have such outstanding results.

The results from this repair make me excited to drive my Jeep again. This is wonderful. I am on cloud 9 right now.

Not all 99's have a different hub.

Yeah, it was a mid-year changeover... gotta love em.

His are different (the fact that he's aware of the changeover proves this in my mind) but it's pretty easy to figure out whether they are the old or new style ones. Old style ones will have the same height rim/hub flange around the center as a 98-down, new style ones will have a different height.