temporaptor

My friend has a wierd problem with his truck (2005 2wd 4 door diesel long bed) : His front tires started to show irregular tread wear. almost bald in the middle then full tread in the middle alternating all the way around the tire, the spots that are bald in the center are full tread on the outer and full tread in the center are bald on the outer. Its the strangest thing ive seen on a tire. He said there is a metallic noise when he turns sometimes but i have yet to reproduce it.

We pulled the front wheels and checked all of the bushings ball joints and tierods. I found nothing out of the ordinary and all looked good except the lower control are bushings. The rubber looked a little dry and cracked but not too bad, and all of the rubber was intact (no chunks missing) and no play when pulling and prying on the control arm.

When i was pulling on stuff, i noticed that the wheel bearing hubs had some play in them and they were kinda hard to turn. Are they supposed to have any play? and how hard are they to turn? I would think they should spin easy? They also have like this black dried grease around the bearing so it leads me to believe they need to be replaced. But they cost a pretty penny soo before my buddy forks out the cash does this sound like the cause?? Any advice and experience would be helpful...................... Thanks

Truck has 150,000 miles on it

dezeldog

With that many miles on I'd bet that it's the unit/bearing hub. Mine went right in that 150k window and within 5k of each other. I got mine from partsplusautostores.com...it is a timken unit and I think I paid $250 ish each. Oh and they have a lifetime warrenty. HTH

Jim