Rear hub play - potential causes? (1 Viewer)

[thecapedcapper]

When taking off my rear passenger brake disk I noticed that there is some play in the hub - I don't have any brass to take the axle out to look but do I just need to replace the wheel bearings or could it be worse? I tried to search for this info but came up with nothing useful.

 

[Tools R Us]

Most likely loss of preload, needs a bearing repack job. IIRC, the factory interval for the job is every 30K miles, few do it. We usually remove the inner axle seal, run the bearings on gear oil, reducing maintenance to an occasional play check, if needed preload set.

 

[thecapedcapper]

That makes a lot of sense thanks, my LC is at 256k miles and I'm assuming the bearings are original so I think I'll just replace them.

 

[Tools R Us]

Can, but likely unnecessary.

 

[MoCoNative]

Tools, the factory rear hub seal holds the oil okay? I suppose it would, just seen that as a potential leak spot on full float trucks that do run on oil. I'm planning on rear bearings for our 80, they were way overdue for a repack when we got the truck a couple years ago, the bearings looked like crap, but I didn't have any to throw in that weekend. I had to really tighten down the one side to get anywhere close to an acceptable preload. I'm hoping new bearings help that.