grin and bearing it?

almost two days ago i did what no gear head should EVER do…

…i went into a dealership to take the ufc’s truck in for a warranty repair and said the unthinkable:

i hear a weird noise when she’s up at highway speed…could you see if you hear it, and if so what it is and how much you’d charge us to fix it?

giving a mechanic from the stealership carte blanche on a vehicle in my care? i should have burned off my gear head tattoo for that shit! but to our amazement, they came back and said “repair’s done – we didn’t hear any noise”. thinking it must be something said warranty repair fixed, we excitedly took off from the dealership, but the noise was still there. this low rumble directly proportionate not with the RPM’s, but rather the actual speed of the vehicle. as it grew over the ensuing months i hypothesized it was something wheel related, so i did a full tire and wheel rotation.

nada.

but when i was putting in headlights i noticed tires looked “off”, so we went to my tire guys and ended up replacing all four tires. now it rode a LOT smoother – but the rumble kept a ‘growing. the only thing left, in my head, was wheel bearings. but those typically make noise a month or two then lock up and leave you stranded, forcing the issue. we drove this thing with the noise for over a year and a half. it’s made the trek to and from NOLA with that noise…twice. it’s been to the coast. all over the 512. never locked up. shit, it still hadn’t. but it was getting louder, and something had to be done.

part of the reason we lived with my diagnosis repairless for a while was fear on my behalf – i read one diy on the subject and it spooked me…the guy that wrote it talked about getting all the bolts undone and then having to work HOURS to get the hub off ’cause it was so rusted on. we’ve had a metric shit ton of rain in the last two years – i feared i was staring down the same fate. but not to be…the guy who had wrote it lived in snow country, which means salted roads, hence his issue.

with us it was issue-free.

it took an hour and a half and the “half” came from her brake pads being degraded to the point i had to push back the piston to get ’em on properly – so you know what the next bit o’ meachic work will be! and it cost us $55 for parts and the ufc is happy. not a bad wrap up to a rainy day off…