chrisl757

Hi all,
I've spent a lovely 12 hours now working on replacing my ball joints. That's all done, and I am trying to reassemble everything.

Here's my problem:

When I went to attach the hub assembly back to the steering knuckle, I went to screw in the three screws (the 13mm 12 point screws) and one of the holes on the hub assembly wouldn't take the screw.

I pulled the hub assembly out several inches to clean and inspect it. What I found was a slightly pitted and cross threaded beginning to the threads.

That means that I can only get 2 out of 3 screws into the hub assembly.

Do I need to get a whole new hub assembly, or should I try to force the screw in somehow? I'm assuming if I push too hard, I'll just worsen the threads?

Any thoughts? This is my daily driver and I am stuck until I get this fixed.

Please help soon.

UJSLOST

Heres what I would do. Do this at your own risk. Others might also not agree. If you can get it to start a little bit even if crossthreading, and you have and impact wrench. I would run that booger up tight. Or you might want to get a thread chaser or tap and retap the threads.

PatriotGT

go with the tap or thread chaser, you may have to remove it sometime
in the future, without it breaking.

fishtaconc

are the male or female threads boogered? If the bolt is you can grind bad threads the end... Female, like suggested run a tap in.

stockli

How many threads in is it cross threaded?

chrisl757

It's the "female" end on the hub. All the bolts are fine. The only part that is cross-threaded is the first 2 - 3 threads at the most. All the other threads are good.

I'd rather not have to tear the hub apart to put a new one on the axleshaft.

My neighbor *might* have a tap/die set, but I am not sure. If not, I'll be taking a taxi to autozone for one.

I am not familiar with a thread chaseer...I'm guessing that's a tap to recover those threads that went the wrong way. Are they relatively easy to use?

thanks to all for the help

knuckleduster271

Go to harbor freight, a tap set is only about $20- its a simple fix....

Bustedback

Try running the bolt from the other side and see if that cleans the threads up. Use anti-seize on the threads to make sure the bolt does not gall up.

chrisl757

Hi all,
I called around this morning and the only places that had tap/die sets didn't open till noon. I couldn't wait that long, since this is my daily driver. So, I ended up buying a new Timken hub and put the whole thing in less than one hour.

It is amazing how much faster things go after you've already spent your weekend learning all the little tricks about your jeep.

While I did notice that the bolts were worn down due to corrosion, they did grab into the new hub just fine.

My next problem is that it didn't fix the knock in my steering. UGGGGh.

But I have new ball joints and a hub at least.

Thanks to all for the great idea. I'm going to buy a tap and die set today so that I never have this trouble again!