Anytime brother!

If you own an older Jeep for any length of time and do your own repair work, you will become intimately familiar with the front hub area. I've had the hubs out of my 95 at least 3 times in the 1 year I've had it - ball joints, hubs and axle seals. Fortunately, you only have to separate the hub and axle if you're replacing the hubs themselves or the axle u-joints. Otherwise you pull the hub and axle off as a single unit as I did for the ball joints and axle seals.
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This forum is definitely the best source of information ever. Having had a TJ as a daily driver for 14y/302k previously, I knew a fair amount about Jeeps prior to joining. I probably know 5x (no exaggeration) as much today just from frequenting this forum.

 

Thank you PatHenry for the great advice! I was able to replace my hub and axle joint on my own, (with help from my Dad and a helpful neighbor) and in the meantime, saved over $300 based on having the same job done at the shop a few years back.

Everything worked out as explained in the many posts on this thread. Stubborn hub bolt and u-joint being the biggest hang up. Brute force on a large breaker bar from the neighbor managed to get the hub loose, and he also was able to cut the old joint out of the shaft with a grinder. I wasn't able to get a hold of a ball-joint press, but I will make sure to do so the next time, as before the grinder came into play, I managed to bash the **** out of my thumb with a 5# sledge! Still numb after two weeks! Oh well, it all worked out in the end.

Also, for anyone else planning to do this job, the bolt/socket trick for popping off the old hub is probably the best kept secret of all time. It's as easy as it sounds!

Thanks again to all!

 

Anytime man! Glad to hear you got it done!

Your thumb will recover - I once took a puck directly in the thumb from a guy on a college hockey scholarship (during warm-ups, nonetheless!) and it was bruised severely for over a month. I'm shocked the nail didn't fall off - but it healed eventually.