Wheel bearings

I manage to grenade my spider gears a few weeks back. So I yanked everything apart and found my carrier housing to be junk as well. Time for a rebuild I thought. I pulled the carrier, front driveshaft, pinion, and axle shafts out of my dana 30 front and sealed the diff cover back up and taped off the axles tubes to keep any dirt and grime out. About 45 miles after removing everything from the housing, I notice a howling sound from my front end. There were no gears or bearing in there to be howling, so I thought nothing of it. Big mistake! After 100 miles or so, It got real bad, and I parked the Jeep. Pulled the tires off and the wheel bearing in the hub assembly are about to fall apart. These hubs have less then 5000 miles on them. Is there something that would have caused the bearings to wear out by removing the axle shafts??? I'm at a lost, dont know where I went wrong.

Did you remove the stub shafts as well? You are lucky to be alive if so. Dana 30 stub shafts are part of what keeps the unit bearing together, if you have to run without axleshafts you're supposed to put the stub shaft back in and only remove the inner shaft and U-joint.

yes, you MUST keep the outer stub in the unit bearing. The big nut is what preloads the bearing and holds it together.

thanks for the info, and I now consider my self lucky!