microBlue Front wheel bearings

You'll have to have the big sockets, torque wrench, torque specs, brass drift, and most importantly the know how.

 

You'll need to jack up the wheel, loosen the lug nuts and take them off. Pull off the drum and brake shoes. Remove the hubcap, and catch the oil in a pan. You'll then need at least one axle socket, depending on the nut retention system, to remove the nut. A large pair of channel locks will get it off usually so you can go to the parts store and get the proper size. Slide the hub off. I imagine you'll be pulling out the races. They don't come out easy. I got mine out by taking a 4" angle grinder and CAREFULLY grinding reliefs into the race surface and they fell right out. If you have a press, press the new races in. If not, I had mine done at the same store I bought the socket from. You'll need the old bearings to press the new races in. You might as well put a new wheel seal in at the same time, don't forget the seat tool at the shop too. Put everything back together, torque the axle nut to spec (if you have them) or until the wheel will not wobble, bend the lock washer or install the inner ring, and you're good to go. All in all, it took me a good day to do both wheels, and I didn't have a tutorial, I just went by my intuition, and it took some time. With the info here, you should be able to do it in 3-6 hours depending on skill and distance to part store.

Be careful that you don't bend the wheel on the hub for the ABS. Also, my truck's wheel seal had been changed before by someone else who put on a Stemco 2 piece seal, which has a metal ring on the spindle. This flustered me for a couple hours. This is where a good parts store counter guy can help dramatically. He asked me who made the seal that was on it, showed me the two piece and the light bulb went off.

 

Better let somebody that is experienced do it because pre-load is very critical when it comes to wheel bearings.

Call Craig with MicroBlue for some help on this.

Note: Sometimes those bearings do not want to come off very easy either.

 

Please report back your results with MicroBlue Bearings.

There is over 100 trucks out there now with MicroBlue Bearings that all the ones I heard about could feel the difference when rolling right off the bat. Most of the 3 axle bearing swaps have been 3 to 4/10ths MPG improvement and have heard including the trailer bearings up to 8/10ths MPG improvement total improvement of tractor and trailer.

Use a temp gun to check hub temps before and after MicroBlue that should be running considerably cooler. The ones that have not have been a bad bearing installation.

Harbour Freight has temps guns from $15 to $40 and work well for finding alot of things on your truck including injectors starting to go bad. http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?keyword=temp+gun



A temp gun is a great tool to have on a truck.

 

I've called the company and they quoted me +/- $1000 for a set of microblue bearings. $1,000 , they must be out of their minds. That's $400-$600 to just coat the bearings. I think
That's to much. If it was about $200 then I would've considered it. I also was thinking about doing the rear end with the gearbox, 2 camshafts and maybe rocker arms. But, with those prices and the current market, I'll buy another engine for the money that I'll spend to microblue.

 

If you need to ask how, then you really need someone to show you first.

 

Yes, waste of money.

 

Let's put it this way, how can you charge for an add On the same or more then the product being added onto cost?
Ex: engine price is $4500. Upgraded pistons would
Cost $4500. Who, in their right mind, would spend the same amount for the part of the unit if you can buy the whole unit for the same price. Unless you are in the
Racing and your return on the investment is almost
Instant. I'd pay $1000 for the bearings if I'll get the $450 return in one month.

It's like an ECM tune, if I knew how to decode them, they are probably the same between the smaller tdi and the "commercial" tdi. However, the price is drastically different.