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My front right wheel was roaring over 55 mph. When spinning the wheel by hand it made a purring sound. I pulled it apart. The inner bearing looked normal. The outer bearing was rusty (grease had turned brown) and the rollers & inner surface were all chewed up looking.

The outer race was rusty. I beat out the races from the rotor. It burred the inside of the rotor, so I ground down the burrs I made with a die grinder. Is this OK to do?

When I cleaned the grease off the spindle, it has a bunch of marks on it like the inside of the bearings were rotating on it. Should I replace the spindle? The bearings were only $15, so I'm not concerned about destroying a set of bearings.

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Unfortunately there is no way to fix what ails your Ford here. You'll need to replace the spindle, hub, and I believe rotor as well (it appears the hub and rotor are one piece - is this correct?). There is no way to salvage this with out taking it to a machine shop, unless you have some mad machining skills (which I assume you don't, or you'd know the answer to this already). You can probably pick up the spindle as a used part at a junk yard, or scour the F150 forums for a part-out like your truck. The new bearings within a short period of time will start spinning in the same locations as these are. Save your new bearings and buy the parts you need to fix this right.

EDIT: Don't forget you'll need your front end alignment done when you get the new spindle and hub in place.

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    Thanks. I just called a local junkyard. It's $55 for a spindle so I'm just going to grab that. It's $431 for a new one, so that is out of the question.
    – Eric Urban
    May 24, 2014 at 15:06
  • This truck has moderate frame damage. Is there even a point in bothering to get an alignment?
    – Eric Urban
    May 25, 2014 at 20:41
  • You may not be able to do an alignment, but if you don't get it as good as possible, you will be destroying front tires and getting bad gas mileage (or should I say worse) to boot.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 ♦
    May 25, 2014 at 20:47

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