Please pardon my extended break from the forum. I've been crushed with other projects and just haven't had much of a chance to work on the Tahoe aside from oil changes, tires, a brake job, oil cooler line, transmission filter, and washer bottle replacement. *Guess that's actually quite a bit*
Well I just hit 119k mostly-highway miles. Since my last suspension upgrades in 2017 I started to experience strange tire wear (cupping) and steering wheel vibrations at highway speeds on my PPV. Since I've been busy, I thought I'd just take my Tahoe to an alignment/suspension/frame shop. Previous alignments had shown the rear right wheel toed out .5 degrees so I suspected PPV use had bent the rear right axle housing a bit. The shop called to tell me the rear was fine but that both front wheel bearings and front LCA ball joints had failed and they could not align the truck!
Naturally I hesitated to believe that 4 front suspension/wheel parts had failed at the same time. The shop demonstrated some play in the lower right ball joint and left front wheel bearing but I could feel no real play in the front right wheel. Rather than spend $2500 on the repairs at the shop, I ordered $800 of parts from Rockauto: Mevotech, SKF, and ACDelco brands. These were lower and upper control arms as well as X-Tracker Hybrid wheel bearing hubs from SKF. Can provide part #'s if helpful.
In all I spent about 8 hours replacing the wheel bearings and control arms. Pics below along with the "shop score".
Wheel hubs: The hubs were a piece of cake to replace! The 3x 18mm oem hub mount bolts were only installed with about 70 ft lbs of torque. Since I have no front axles, the hubs literally fell out once I removed the mounting bolts. GM had used AWD front hubs on my truck and the lack of rear dust shields surely didn't help with contaminant ingress. Front left was shot as expected however the front right was serviceable. Grime had entered the bearing though so it was only a matter of time before failure set in. 1:1 shop:me here. The X-Tracker Hybrid hubs seem to be a small improvement over OEM with a ball and tapered design.
Lower Control Arms: The lower left control arm ball joint had an almost imperceptible amount of play. Probably 1/32" if that... The front right was much worse at about 1/8" play. I don't know if 1/8" is enough to throw off an alignment due to the way the weight of the truck compresses the lower ball joints. The new LCA casting is actually different from my original arms, even though both are ACDelco parts. It seems GM has seriously beefed up the ball joint mounting area. I'll take it!
I used a jack to apply pressure to a pickle fork while whacking the ball joint thread with a sledge hammer to unseat the ball joints. IMO 2:2 shop:me at this point
Upper Control Arms: The shop didn't comment on the upper arms, however while you're in there... New arms are from Mevotech and are much thicker than OEM! Actually twice as thick in some areas... I'm sure this adds 1/2 pound to each arm however I'm guessing the unsprung weight penalty is worth it. At this point I discovered the upper control arm bushings were shot (shrunk, dried, and unbonded) so I'm glad I replaced them. PSA: make sure not to tighten rubber suspension bushing bolts when your wheels are in the air or you may damage the rubber. Old upper ball joints were fine but the tapers sustained some heat damage (bluing/darkening).
Tie rods: The shop didn't comment on any tie rod problems, however I felt some play in the left tie rods even after replacing the wheel bearings and control arms. I tossed on some Duralast Gold tie rod ends, greased everything (YES Zerks on everything!!) and tugged on the wheels again. The only remaining play is coming from the steering rack. A steering rack bushing kit is next on my agenda however to avoid a week plus downtime I'm going to grab a badly-needed alignment first. So 2:3 shop:me considering the tie rods? The $1600 savings for double the parts was also worth it. I'm working on a video with hopefully some suspension tips/tricks.
Thank you for reading! Please LMK if you have any questions.
P.S. I used a $20, 18" HF adjustable wrench to remove the old left inner tie rod and a Dorman "Help!" CV boot adjustable repair strap to reattach the boot. I know it's pretty easy to replace the steering rack however the tie rods took just 1 hr. Note also that GM calls to heat shield wrap the lower part of the ABS cables on PPVs. I used some Autozone heat shielding tape there.
Well I just hit 119k mostly-highway miles. Since my last suspension upgrades in 2017 I started to experience strange tire wear (cupping) and steering wheel vibrations at highway speeds on my PPV. Since I've been busy, I thought I'd just take my Tahoe to an alignment/suspension/frame shop. Previous alignments had shown the rear right wheel toed out .5 degrees so I suspected PPV use had bent the rear right axle housing a bit. The shop called to tell me the rear was fine but that both front wheel bearings and front LCA ball joints had failed and they could not align the truck!
Naturally I hesitated to believe that 4 front suspension/wheel parts had failed at the same time. The shop demonstrated some play in the lower right ball joint and left front wheel bearing but I could feel no real play in the front right wheel. Rather than spend $2500 on the repairs at the shop, I ordered $800 of parts from Rockauto: Mevotech, SKF, and ACDelco brands. These were lower and upper control arms as well as X-Tracker Hybrid wheel bearing hubs from SKF. Can provide part #'s if helpful.
In all I spent about 8 hours replacing the wheel bearings and control arms. Pics below along with the "shop score".
Wheel hubs: The hubs were a piece of cake to replace! The 3x 18mm oem hub mount bolts were only installed with about 70 ft lbs of torque
. Since I have no front axles, the hubs literally fell out once I removed the mounting bolts. GM had used AWD front hubs on my truck and the lack of rear dust shields surely didn't help with contaminant ingress. Front left was shot as expected however the front right was serviceable. Grime had entered the bearing though so it was only a matter of time before failure set in. 1:1 shop:me here. The X-Tracker Hybrid hubs seem to be a small improvement over OEM with a ball and tapered design.Lower Control Arms: The lower left control arm ball joint had an almost imperceptible amount of play. Probably 1/32" if that... The front right was much worse at about 1/8" play. I don't know if 1/8" is enough to throw off an alignment due to the way the weight of the truck compresses the lower ball joints. The new LCA casting is actually different from my original arms, even though both are ACDelco parts. It seems GM has seriously beefed up the ball joint mounting area. I'll take it!
I used a jack to apply pressure to a pickle fork while whacking the ball joint thread with a sledge hammer to unseat the ball joints. IMO 2:2 shop:me at this pointUpper Control Arms: The shop didn't comment on the upper arms, however while you're in there... New arms are from Mevotech and are much thicker than OEM! Actually twice as thick in some areas... I'm sure this adds 1/2 pound to each arm however I'm guessing the unsprung weight penalty is worth it. At this point I discovered the upper control arm bushings were shot (shrunk, dried, and unbonded) so I'm glad I replaced them. PSA: make sure not to tighten rubber suspension bushing bolts when your wheels are in the air or you may damage the rubber. Old upper ball joints were fine but the tapers sustained some heat damage (bluing/darkening).
Tie rods: The shop didn't comment on any tie rod problems, however I felt some play in the left tie rods even after replacing the wheel bearings and control arms. I tossed on some Duralast Gold tie rod ends, greased everything (YES Zerks on everything!!) and tugged on the wheels again. The only remaining play is coming from the steering rack. A steering rack bushing kit is next on my agenda however to avoid a week plus downtime I'm going to grab a badly-needed alignment first. So 2:3 shop:me considering the tie rods? The $1600 savings for double the parts was also worth it. I'm working on a video with hopefully some suspension tips/tricks.
Thank you for reading! Please LMK if you have any questions.
P.S. I used a $20, 18" HF adjustable wrench to remove the old left inner tie rod and a Dorman "Help!" CV boot adjustable repair strap to reattach the boot. I know it's pretty easy to replace the steering rack however the tie rods took just 1 hr. Note also that GM calls to heat shield wrap the lower part of the ABS cables on PPVs. I used some Autozone heat shielding tape there.
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