locking hub hot to the touch?
 

well guys, i thought i needed new wheel bearings, but today i drove my truck to work fine and none of the howling noise i have been hearing alot lately. anyway, the last few days whenever i wanna lock the hubs into 4x, the passenger side wont turn by hand, even if i move the truck forward or backward a lil bit. i usually have to end up putting a set of channel locks on it and using those, then it goes easy. tonight on the way home from work, i had to use the pliers, and when turned almost full lock and moving, the truck would make a funny noise. then when i got home, the passenger side locking hub is warm to the touch (not hot, but warm), and the driver side is cold as usual. do i have a bad axle ujoint on the pass side? what else? thanks in advance.

It sound like you do have a wheel bearing going bad and getting hot on the spindle. Or an inner spindle neelde bearings gone and the axle is rubbing and getting hot inside the spindle..
Not to many other reasons for a hub to get hot.
If its hard to lock and unlock I would take it off and look for some surface rust on the hub and clean it up with some WD 40 OR MARVEL. it would be difficult to lock also if there is a bind on it, example: bearings bad,loose.

needless to say I would take it apart and give everything a good once over.
you don't want a bearing seizing up or catching the grease on fire in there..

brake caliper sticking can get things hot........

or shoes adjusted to far out dragging the drums, I bet it's a bad bearing.

i'm scratching my head on this one...took the hub apart and it was sticking, so i put more grease on it and its fine now. the seals on the spacer for the hub (i have the large external kind) are bad and let some wwater and road salt get in there. i used a magnetic screwdriver, and there arent any pieces of metal in there. Also, the wheel doesn't jiggle at all if you hit the tire, which dad told me was a way to spot a bad bearing. And it doesn't make the howling noise any more either...I am confused.

Just a little note to self.
I was always told to never put grease on a manual hub.
When it gets cold it may not want to disengage, was alwasy told clean them up real good and drench in wd 40 or other type of spray lubricant. to this day I do it and play in mud alot.

You may not have a bad wheel bearing ( i usually check by grabbing the bottom and top of tire and do the push pull method)

But i guess if it isn't making any noise now you might be alright..
I would have taking it down to the spindle and took that off to look at the needle bearings inside of it.