I just replaced the front bearings on my 88. I bought the truck with the aftermarket wheel set as seen in my picture. I'm wondering if the offset contributed to premature bearing wear. The outside bearings were good but inside were worn to the point that the tapered ends were binding against inside race stops or retaining wall, not sure what they're called.

I replaced bearings before but never as complicated as these. Especially having to disconnect the brake lines. I like the wheels and how they handle, but if the offset needs to be back to spec for safety reason I will. Otherwise I think I'll live with premature wear. I'll have to say that ride quality has improved. Anyhow from the picture is the offset is too extreme?

 

This might be better.

 

I have the same wheels at those but in a 10" width. I have over 100K miles on mine and just repacked my bearings. They looked good with no signs of major wear. Might what to see if there is something else causing it.

 

That's good to know thanks. The grease looked good and red nothing indicating contamination. BTW the outside bearings were serviceable but I replaced them anyway.

 

I would take a guess that it's not the wheel/tire combo and likely something like a bad install, wrong preload settings, too long of service interval, or other. Maybe they got replaced in the past but the races were not swapped, who knows. Good thing is you found it and resolved it before it was too late. If you had some 8-10" wide wheels with more offset and perhaps larger, heavier tires then possibly.

 

I think you should be good to go.
Your tire and wheel combination is not that far out from stock.
What you found was more than likely related to lack of maintenance etc

 

The thing is very seldom does anyone remove the inner bearing to repack it because of needing to pull the whole hub assembly off.

drive the seal out inspect and repack install new seal.

Put it all back together.

I have seen inner bearings about ready to fail while the outers looked good