After a busy summer with other priorities I was finally able to address the bad wheel bearing on the Duchess. Did lots of research and found several excellent write-ups on TheSamba.com and elsewhere. I got the car jacked up and secured, removed the axle and was on my way. The first think I noticed was that the axle nut was only hand tight. Having never done this before I was prepared with my breaker bar and cheater. Simply put the bar on and loosened the nut. I think this might have caused the bearing to go bad. The inner ball bearing was fine but the outer roller bearing was in bad shape.

Got it all back together, including torquing the axle nut down properly, and the noise went away. Felt good.

A couple of observations I had along the way. I found that I needed to use a pick to clean out the CVS nuts prior to taking them off. The 12 point tool did not fully seat in the bolt without cleaning them out. Cleaning was not necessary on transmission side.

The bug process talks about hanging the axle up out of the way. My Duchess has framework in the way requiring the removal of the axle completely. Not a big deal.

All in all not nearly as bad a job as I expected.