Here's my write-up for removing the front wheel hubs on my 02, 4x4, 1500. I've read countless threads, saw some pics, watched a few videos on this. But I hope that this will help people as well and maybe be more informative.

All in all, this method I only removed the wheels, brakes, and rotors.



I saw the 1aauto vid where the guy made it look easy to pull the half shafts (front axles, CVs, whatever you want to call them) out from the diff and then got them out of the way - that didn't work out for me. So my backup plan was to rent a 2 / 3 jaw puller, and pull the tie rod and upper ball joint out and move the entire steering knuckle out of the way and remove the CV then. - Well that method didn't work either. And those hub bolts (3 of them) are very hard to get to with the CV in place, but it can be done.



Since there is play in the half shafts, I used the 2 jaw puller to gently push the CV back from the hub. Do not use excessive pressure, basically I pushed the CV inward with my bare hands and then used the puller to just hold it in place.



The bolt on top is the easiest to get a bite on, however if you turn the steering wheel to one side it exposes one of the bottom bolts a little bit more. Then steer the other way and loosen the last bolt.



I used a combination of a regular 15mm socket, a 3" extension, a deep well extension, and a u-joint socket depending on the angle and amount of clearance.

Now that all the bolts are loosened up, I grabbed a small pry bar and a small hammer and I went for this little gap in the brake dust shield.

Believe it or not two small taps and the hub came right out.
Use a good scraper or dremel to clean up the gunk from the knuckle.



Although I don't ever expect to have to go thru this again I put a good layer of anti-seize everywhere the new hub will be in contact with the knuckle. (If only they did this from the factory)
So, I wasted a lot of time on the drivers side learning the shortcuts to take, so I figure the passenger side will take me 30 min, and the sun is setting. Well, not so much. This one was very stubborn, one flat head screwdriver paid the ultimate price as I drove it into the gap in the brake shield. Lots of banging and prying. And I suppose if the axle wasn't sticking out thru the hub still it would have been better to beat the hell out of it with a BFH, but I didn't want to damage the splines on the axle by smashing the hub apart, so I took it easy. Even when it did start to finally open up just a bit to get my pry bar in between it was another 10 minutes of hammering. There was a good 1/16 to 1/8 inch of solid junk in the hub housing. That took another 10 minutes with a dremel to get cleaned up.



For the assembly, the 2 jaw puller trick didn't work because the new "wheel mounting plate thing" didn't have a squared back like the original one, so I had to hold the axle stub in and tighten the bolts.

I hope you all find this very helpful and will be encouraged to tackle this project on your own.

I bought the Timken hubs from RockAuto.com The hubs I took out where the stock originals with over 194,000 miles. I was getting a very loud ticking from my left side when I would backup in a left turn. That was pretty much the only noise the old ones made, but after I removed the left hub and spun it by hand it sounded pretty bad, like no grease inside! Now with the new hubs there's no ticking noise and that very annoying, very excessive rattling noise during my stops has gone away!