If you feel your wheel bearing doing that, I would not wait long to get that fixed. I had mine blow and going down the interstate one day at around 75 my truck pulled way to the right almost pulling me off the road. After that I did not take it on the highway again until I fixed it. The last thing you want to do is to actually weld the bearing on that spindle. Which I have heard of. For the bearings, theres no real need to go to a dealer, all auto parts stores will/should have the bearings. And they are not hard to install. As for the rear springs, you can get DORs leaf spring kit to replace the old ones. Or you can find a spring shop around that can fix or build a set for you. I have the same motor and am looking for more power. I am going to go for a comp cams 252 grind and a set of roller rockers. I was thinking 1.6's but I may go with the 1.5's. But you can fit a 14" round open element filter on there. All you have to do is remove one vacuum line and plug it up, get the spacer from a parts store and the filter and housing kit. Edelbrock makes them as well as Mr. Gasket. Advance auto has both these, the spacer and filter. This helped with my throttle response, but i did not see a gain over my K&N at the top end. Currently my exhaust consists of a catalytic converter with the rest of my exhaust just there for looks. Sure its loud, but it doesnt bother me. Its either the exhaust or the tires, which I can still here. I was wheeling with Mike the other day at Paragon (Rodeo_Guy) and he can vouch for the sound. But the only way to get any kind of power from these motors is by going internally and changing cams and rockers. If you decide to go with manual hubs, I have to insist you go with the warns. I hear lots of complaints about the superwinch hubs. Plus you can always rebuild the warns for $25 if you have to. But I myself and getting the urge for bigger tires, after seeing Mikes rodeo up close, this was the first one with tires bigger than mine that i have seen.