June of 2017 I had a Left front hub failure during a trip to Orlando Fl on my 2006 Ram Mega Cab 4x4 with 217K miles. Orlando Dodge replaced the left front with a factory new hub along with right and left rotors and pads because I had damaged to rotor when the hub failed. As a precaution when I got home I replaced the right side with a Timken brand hub. Less than a year later and 11k miles the left hub failed again when I was out of town, though this time I was only 60 miles from home. My local Dodge dealer replaced the hub under new parts warranty. 3 months ago they replaced the left hub again under warranty because it was extremely noisey and probably close to another failure. The truck is back at the dealer tonight with the same diagnosis, a bad left front hub! How on gods green earth am I having all of these hub failures? I'm afraid to drive the truck anymore for fear I'll get stranded or worse have a wreck when the hub fails. The truck has standard offset 20 x 8.0 Laramie wheels with 285-60R20 tires so I can't see wheels and tires as the problem, Meanwhile my RH Timken hub seems to be quite trouble free. Anyone else experienced repeated hub failures?

 

Generally that's a result of improper installation. If they don't torque the axle nut properly, the hub will munch itself up fairly quickly.

 

Crap Parts or Improper installation....most likely Crap Parts . I put 4 sets of hubs on my 03... 1st set dealer installed at 30,000 miles. Then I bought the 2nd and 3rd set OEM Timken hubs from dodge dealer on ebay. That would of been just after the 2006 era of the bearing recall. I'm thinking the 2nd and 3rd set of hubs could of been part of the lot of defective parts??? But I dont know. I now have Timken bearings made in Korea from Rock Auto. Been installed for maybe 6 years now no problems. All the hubs I installed were torqued properly. It got to the point I always carried a spare hub with me when out of town snowmobiling. On a positive I learned to be very good at changing hubs.

 

I can agree on the fairly quickly part of your reply...I don't think I've gotten 2000 miles out of this last one.

 

Rumor has it, the axle nut is a one-time use feller. If they re-use the nut installing the new hub, it probably loosens up, and that will destroy the hub.

 

I'm pretty sure their castellated on the solid axle models so I'm not sure where that idea comes from.

 

They aren't on mine..... granted, mine is a second gen.

 

mine is on my second gen 01 2500 but it's probably not torqued correctly