Man I am pissed off so I am going to vent. My truck has been making a few weird noises over the past week or so but I haven't really been able to narrow it down. At first it was only happening when I turned the wheel to the left and then it started happening more and more often. I got under the truck a few times but couldn't find anything. So then this morning, driving in to work, the truck starts pulling a bit and now it hits me ... the damned hub. So now I am pissed because I have to replace my passenger side hub in the parking lot of work AND I had to go to Napa and drop $260 on a freakin hub ... I still can't get over how expensive they are. I had to do the driver's side last year at about the same exact time. Oh well I'll let you know how it goes.

 

Same thing happened to me about 2 months ago, plus new u-joints. Now im having steering problems.

 

So definitly was the hub and it definitly didn't go as smoothly as it could have. Why the hell did the Dodge engineers have to make the bolt pattern on the hub so damned small? I could barely get the damned socket on to the bolts. I had to push in on the spline to get the CV boot out of the way just to get the socket on. Then after I got the bolts out, good luck breaking the hub free. Man I beat on that thing for a good 30 minutes and couldn't get it off. I didn't happen to have an air chisel so I had to heat the thing with a propane torch for about 30 minutes before the thing would beat off. In any case, once I got the old one off, the new one went on realatively easily. So I replaced the drivers side about a year ago and now just replaced the passenger side ... hopefully I'll get another 80K miles out of these. I will say this though ... the truck drives sooo much better now, a night and day difference in terms of handling and whatnot.

 

i know exactly what you mean i have replaced my front hubs 4 TIMES. i just wish someone would come up with a heavy duty one for us ram owners with a lift and bigger tires i have spent upwards of 2000.00 dollars on HUBS and they are starting to make noise again!! sounds like a damn chain is being drug down the street that is why i havent driven the truck in over a month . but i will be getting new ones again soon!!

 

The whole front end is shoddy in my opinion. Before I hit 30K miles on my '03, I had to get my rack replaced, passenger side hub, passenger side inner axle, driver side inner and outer axel. By the time I hit 50K I had to have the hub on the driver side replaced, and the inner and outer axels on the passenger side. I'm now at 70K and my rack is leaking again. And this time I've got no warranty to cover it. I can do the job myself, but I don't want to spend that kind of cash on a part that's only going to last 25K-30K miles. So I'll second the I wish they made some heavy duty aftermarket parts for these things.

 

I have never had a problem with the front end other than the hubs ... and I think that getting 80K out of them is pretty damned good! Well I bought the truck with 40K miles on it and the previous owner said that he had never changed them. So now the truck has 80K and I just replaced them. The only issue that I have with the power steering is that it loses a tiny bit of fluid from time to time because of the fauly hose clamp when the fluid enters the rack (known issue, just too lazy to fix right now) ... I have to put half a bottle of PS fluid in every 4-5 months or so. I did have to replace a CV boot once, but that was because when my last hub blew out it punctured the CV boot ... that was fairly simple as well. $20 kit from Dodge.