Mrs. Cusser's 2014 Yukon Denali AWD, 117K miles. She was departing from grocery store Thursday afternoon 5 miles from home and noticed a clunking sound, called me immediately. I took my floor jack, confirmed the noise even with her driving 20 feet, jacked up the front and observed the front right wheel would wobble; I lowered it, tried the lug nuts thinking they'd somehow worked loose, but all were tight. So seemed to me like bad wheel bearings. I drove Mrs. Cusser and her groceries home, looked on Internet and found AWD 2014 Denali has sealed front hubs, so way different from inner and outer wheel bearings I've done before.

A softball teammate has a lift in his garage, he said to bring it over. I carefully drove it 4 miles to his house, the noise disappeared after 200 feet. There, he also saw the wheel wobble and also felt it was the RF sealed hub. So we took that off, when I spun it by hand I noticed some noise and more resistance than we liked. So we picked up a new hub and installed all that (some bolts were quite tight) and also replaced the front brake pads (both sides, of course) as the thickness was getting somewhat close to the "chirpers warning" tab. So all fixed.

This was in Prescott AZ, and we had never had any experience in 20 years here with a local garage, and doubted that any would bump a returning customer on a Friday for a newbie (Mrs. Cusser needs the vehicle on Sunday); the shop we use is in Phoenix, and we have 100 miles AAA towing, but that would cause some logistics issues to get it towed there, and like many shops is closed Saturdays. So anyway, job done, I learned a bunch too !

 

Yesterday I got around to replacing the rear disc pads on this Yukon. They were almost to their end of life, glad Mrs. Cusser didn't drive another month on the pads; the rotors were perfect. Straightforward except hat the rear right lug nuts were so tight my electric impact wouldn't budge them; I remembered that a wheel repair place had taken off the wheel to weld up a crack and balance it, and they apparently torqued it too much. I used a torque wrench when installing.

It seems that when towing (horse trailer), the rear pads wear at about he same or more than the front pads; typically on my '88 Mazda truck and 1998 and 2004 Frontiers the front brake pads need changing twice for each rear shoe replacement.