A little nervous after new hubs....

Hey folks....

I just tore the front end of my ranger down to the axles (removed the brakes, hubs, bearing assemblies and steering knuckles) put in new AVM hubs, replaced both oil seals on both knuckles, replaced both weal bearings, replaced both rotors added new break pads, and bolted in Monroe heavy duty struts.

In the process of disassembling everything, I stripped out a few bolts holding the weal bearings on and one I had to cut two off with a torch. When I was reassembling everything, my Ford dealer said that Ford no longer makes that bolt and all he had was a bolt that matched the one needing replacement, he gave it to me. I used it and each weal bearing had two of these bolts in it with a generous amount of lock thread. I also was not able to get my torque wrench to fit in the space and it did not go high enough for the bolt, so instead I used a socket with a breaker bar and a friend and got each bolt as tight as we could. While cruising down the interstate the other day I started to think of what might happen if something came lose or broke: should I be concerned about these bolts or not having exact torque on each one?


Last question....

When I was installing my axles into the weal bearings.... There is a little plastic clip that has a metal ring around it that slides down the axle shaft and holds the axle in place. I replaced both of these from Ford and had a friend push in on the axle shaft while I took snap ring pliers and slid it down the axle; one side made a clicking sound when it snapped in place, the other didnt, we played around with it and ensured that it was as far as it could go and the axle shaft could not pull back out. Sounds stupid but is there any chance that this could be an issue down the road? Reason I ask is that the passenger side stock clip failed and caused the axle shaft to slide out about half an inch and finished off my already toasted and rusted vac hubs, which was the originating cause for this project.

Thanks for any pointers!

Sound like you did it right to me. Don't worry about it. I would put it back up in the air in a couple days and check the bolts. With those, tight is good and tighter is better. If you have them locktighted you'll be just fine..... I think.

as long as you were able to replace the bolts that you destroyed and have locktight on all of them i believe that you will be fine.