Packing Front Bearings

My wife has an 2000 Xterra. She had the brakes done at about 35000 miles. The bill was about $600 which I though was uuuummmmm-somewhat high!!. One of the things they did was repack the front bearings. It needed new front pads again so I just replaced them for about $80. Rotors are nice and smooth and straight so I didn' turn them. But I'm wondering about repacking the bearings. On my other vehicles which are not 4x4, I don't repack them very often but I don't know much about the fronts on this car. How often should they be repacked? Unless there is something special about them I would think they don't have to be regreased every 40 thousand miles. Do they?

Thanks

Fredmc

You're probably fine but just in case.

www.rkrenn.com/xterra/howto/bearing/bearing.htm

I think the owner's manual says something about every 30,000 miles but my service dept guy said in his experience, it's not necessary till about 45,000 miles. I had mine done for the first time at the 60,000 mile service along with the brakes. If you do water crossings, though, definitely more often than that.

I just repacked mine for the first time at 30,000 miles and they were still in great condition, plenty of good grease and no sign of problems or any water intrusion. The manual says to regrease at 30,000 miles for Schedule 1 maintenance or at every 3,750 miles if you operate frequently in water. "Frequently" is pretty vague. What it boils down to is preventive maintenance. You can go by the maintenance outlined in the manual or ignore it and hope nothing goes wrong down the road.