I haven’t used the trailer much the last 2 years and I haven’t greased the bearing for 2 years. Now when I grease it the new grease doesn’t go in the fitting it shoots out the sides. It doesn’t push the old grease out. Any idea’s on why it won’t take the grease. Here is a pic of the setup if it helps. I also noticed the brake was dragging on this particular wheel if that helps in deciphering why the grease won’t flow.
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I had a bearing buddy on a trailer that wouldn’t take greese too. I was using a hand pump and it would just squirt out the sides of the zirc. I took it to our shop and hit it with the 18 volt dewalt electric grease gun and I filled right up compressing the spring like it’s supposed too. Your brake hanging up i can’t tell you.
So it just shoots out the sides of the zerk fitting? Try and break free the little ball in the middle with a screwdriver. They sometimes corrode in place and get stuck. If that doesn’t work replace the zerk.
Do you have a mini hand torch. Heat up the zert and then try pumping it with grease.
You probably have old grease inside the spindle bore that a hand pump can’t push out.Remove the zerk and poke a piece of wire in bore to loosen grease.Sure lube axles will sometimes do that when sitting too long.
Brake hanging up,probably needs to be bled,or piston starting to seize in caliper.Check the caliper slide pins for corrosion.
As others have posted, the zerk is clogged. Personally, whenever this happens I reach into my little zerk replacement kit and fish out a new one, but you can unclog them usually if you want to take the time.
Seems like now might be a great time to pull your bearings and inspect them. Just saying as long as you’re halfway there.
Grouse
Thanks for all the help. I’m a little concerned about redoing the bearings. Would I be able to buy the bearing complete, kind of like buying loaded calipers?
Check out recstuff.com. You can order hubs with the bearings, ready to go. Or they have complete bearing kits. Both seem very reasonable. I like having a spair hub with ready to go when taking longer trips with the boat.
Thanks for all the help. I’m a little concerned about redoing the bearings. Would I be able to buy the bearing complete, kind of like buying loaded calipers?
What part about redoing the bearings has you concerned? ‘
I’m going to guess it’s probably tapping out the old races and fitting new ones, correct? I can see how there’d be a “how do you do that factor” to that.
I can and still occasionally do them with taper punches but there is a technique to that that involves hitting at 12, 6, 3, 9 etc, but they do come out.
Everntually, I wanted to speed things up so I bought a race remover/installation tool set. This makes it fast and pretty much foolproof.
I say pretty much foolproof because some guy (not me, obviously) could not pay attention and get the race in the wrong way and have to redo everything but that has never happened to me so I’m not sure why your brought it up and I’ wish you’d quit talking about it beause I’m not sensitive about it at all.
You certainly CAN buy a loaded hub, but that basically adds many times the cost. Spare loaded hubs are great for emergency quick repairs on the, but for an in-garage repair, it’s totally unnecessary.
Just saying it’s probably not as hard as you’re thinking and a one-time tool investment as well as some time watching youtube and it’s pretty easy and very low cost.
Grouse
TFG hit the nail on the head. It’s a messy job, but worth the savings in the long run.
Once you do it once you’ll wonder what you thought the big deal was.
My dad bought one of those race install kits, they are pretty nice. His set you can flip the dies and also use to set the real seal.
Update – I have removed the hub, but I’m having trouble locating parts and a diagram or video on how to order the proper parts. I don’t really see any ware in the hub, but I do want to replace the bearings and other parts since I did damage the seals and a rubber washer.
What info do I need to get the proper bearing?
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one more thing…….. The grease fitting appears to be part of the shaft. Is there a way to replace it?
The cup and the cone each have numbers on them, same goes for the seal. Normally the zert is threaded or press fit into the shaft.
You may only have to replace the seals and repack the bearings if the bearings are still good. If you take the bearings out and clean old grease out of them, spin them on your fingers and feel for any drag or looseness, if no problem repack and put back in leaving race in place. I have replaced bearings and left the old race in place many times, w/out problems as long as race hasn’t been damaged. I only put less than a 1000 miles on my trailer a year though. If going on long trips with lots of miles I would replace with a matched set of race and bearing. One trick a old guy showed me to remove the race was to run a weld bead around the inside face of the race and remove while still hot with a punch or flat screwdriver.
They make a tool that you put on the zerk and hit with a hammer forcing new grease into zerk. Even if you get zerk working I would recommend still taking bearings out and checking them and repacking.
The seal should have a number on the edge or face some where that the parts store can cross reference.
Update – I have removed the hub, but I’m having trouble locating parts and a diagram or video on how to order the proper parts. I don’t really see any ware in the hub, but I do want to replace the bearings and other parts since I did damage the seals and a rubber washer.
What info do I need to get the proper bearing?
Seals are pretty much disposable anyway, they are the first thing to wear out or become damaged so never go through all the work of disassembly and leave the old seals.
Again, with bearings and races, unless they have very few miles on them, I would not go through all the work of disassembly and cleaning without replacing. I am wary of leaving any part like the races in place unless you REALLY, REALLY clean and inspect them for any signs of pitting or wear.
For obvious reasons, this is difficult to do unless you have an inspection camera so for all practical purposes you have to remove the races to really clean and inspect them, so at that point, to me at least, it’s a fool’s errand to not replace them.
Also, you have to know what you are looking at when inspecting bearings. “Pitting”, for example, may not be huge, easily visible craters, it can simply appear as a dulling or “crystalizing” of the surface of a metal part that would otherwise be shiny.
Because the cost of these parts is relatively low on most trailers (and the cost of failure is high), I’m not a fan of reusing bearings/parts. Honestly, I just don’t see the point, but my view is that time is worth something too and to go through the time of a teardown and cleaning and then reuse the same old parts seems to be penny wise and pound foolish.
Where to get parts? Assuming you don’t have the trailer’s manual or maker’s parts diagram, the next best thing is clean the bearings and take them in to a knowledgeable auto parts store to find an exact match. The vast majority of bearing setups are in about 4-5 common sizes, so if you have an auto parts store that’s worth anything, they should be able to match things up.
Grouse
So I wanted to follow up on how this all ended up. My local auto mechanic was able to match up the bearing parts and put it together so I just had to slide it on, tighten it down and fill with grease. I noticed with it pulled apart that a small amount of grease did come through the back of the axle so I was able to put fresh grease in.
I did buy loaded calipers on line from Ameratrailparts.com and was very happy with the parts and the customer service they provided.
Finally I do agree with what you guys said as far as encouraging me to get in there and do it. As it was being reassembled it did make sense. It was weird on how many little and big bits of info that you all contributed to make it work! I really appreciate it. Hopefully at some point maybe we will even get a chance to fish together. Thank you to all who contributed!
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