It's better than countless hours of guesswork and throwing parts at it.

 

yakkier is guilty also.... he was talking a couple weeks ago about bad bearing and u joints, then waits til it lets go on the highway

 

Well, having problems busting a nut here.

Should have went with my instinct and just twisted the stud off with a breaker bar, but I was thinking maybe I could finesse the lug off.
First tried applying some heat, stopped when the bearing cover started to melt, forgot it was plastic.
Then tried a nut splitter, couldn't get a good angle, and it just ate through the plastic outer coating.

Right angle grinder with a cutoff wheel was next, once again, couldn't get the angle or clearance to make a good cut.
Then on to the air chisel - A good idea in theory, but not in practice.
It tends to just mash the metal together, making the resulting mess about as strong as it was in one piece.

This is the sad result of an hour of labor trying to get the lug off - A bunch of kids started playing in my yard and both adjoining yards and were driving me nuts, so I hung it up for today, guess I'll have to hack it off tomorrow.



Still haven't been able to visually see what the problem is, components on both sides look good to me

Passenger side


Driver

 

I saw that and i was like wtf your shocks doing outside the coils??? lol

 

his front axle is missing too.

 

You say that it looked good, but how does it feel yanking on the tire with it in the air to get a feel for the wheel bearing.

Also, you should get a picture of the back of the control arms and check out your shocks. Take the bottom shock bolt loose and move it. When I changed my shocks they felt fine when I pushed the truck down, but when I took them off they took a few minutes to react when I pushed on them. I'm thinking either a busted shock, wheel bearings or a crack in a control arm.

 

I'm leaning towards bearings too.
Shock I am doubting, these are less than a year old, and I don't think a busted shock would cause the drastic vibration I felt.

My problem with yanking in the air is the tires barely clear the ground, even with 3 blocks of wood on the jack ,, But yeah, I gotta do that. I was concentrating on getting the tires off first and having a look, which normally doesn't take but a minute.
The mutilated lug is still hanging me up.

 

I dont know how your setup is, but is that a center cap , if so you might have to destroy that out of the way ,to get more room at your lug, then i doubt a small pipe wrench, or see if you cant get someone with a cutting torch? sux to be in that situation

 

Well I finally got the lug off, had to whack the whole stud off with a BFH.
No other option really, and the stud would have been toast after all of that anyhow.

I think I found the problem, the bearing nut was not even finger tight, it spun right off with 0 effort.
Not sure how exactly it could have done that with the cotter pin very much intact, but it was as lose as a goose.
Bearing looks good, but I might as well replace both sides while I'm there.

Now heres a question I probably don't even want to know the answer to - Whats the procedure for installing another lug stud ?

 

pop the old one out with a hammer. pop the new on in with a hammer.