My 2004 F150 Laredo

In 2006 I bought a 2004 Ford F150 Laredo from a car dealership in Mystic CT. It is a two wheel drive model (I’ll never make that mistake again). The Truck about 20,000 miles on it and I got a decent price I was happy with.

Since my purchase of the truck, it has been my daily driver and now, almost 5 years later, I have 120,000 miles on it.

Luckily I have not had any major mechanical issues with it. However, the design of the wheel bearings on this particular F150 model is particularly bad. The front when bearings are part of the brake rotor. There is no way (that I know of) to remove the wheel bearings and pack them with grease. The design does not allow for the bearing casement to be removed by press either. Therefore if the wheel bearings go bad, you have to replace the whole rotor. Each rotor is about $280 US.

Since owning the truck I have had to replace the rotors about every 40,000 miles! You can tell as soon as they start to fail, when you turn the wheel at a slow speed and you hear a clicking, they will fail soon. The sound is much worse than the look. The grinding of these bearings is painful to hear. But don’t risk it, they need to be replaced. You do not want to do any spindle damage which would be very costly.
My experience has been to replace both front rotors if one fails, because if one fails, the other will also very soon afterwards. It is also a good time to check your disk brakes on the front also.

I have spoken with other F150 Laredo owners, and they do not have this problem. However, most of them do not have the wheel bearings like I do, they have the bearings separate from the rotor. Even other owners of 2004 2 wheel drive models have bearings and rotor separate design. Some of my friends that have trucks from other manufactures have the wheel-bearing one piece design like I do. So I can’t figure out what the installation criterion is.

Overall the truck has been very good. It is light in the back so in the snow I need some added weight. It is comfortable and roomy. I would recommend when you purchase a truck, take a close look at the mechanical configuration of the rotors and under carriage. The salesman generally will not be able to give you the mechanical details, but this is important and may ended up costing you a lot of money I the long term.