Vortex or Ultra Tow hubs?

First time boat owner, finally. Boats in good shape and just doing routine maintenance to get a base line.

On to the bearings/hubs before I make a 400 mile round-trip up north here soon. 2006 Shorelandr trailer, SLR20LW. Guessing its the orginal hub body, shorelandr version of bearing buddies on them.

I’m considering replacing the hubs completely to start fresh. I was strongly looking at the hubs with a rear grease zerk to flush out old grease and service the inner and outer bearing. Two I found was Ultra Tow at northern tool and the Vortex. Any experience with either here? Vortex is a bit more, is there a quality difference?

Any advice is appreciated.

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Just do new bearings and seals.

chuck100 wrote:

Just do new bearings and seals.

I would agree to just rebuild what you have. I have vault hubs on my boat, and they had been problem free for 8 years and one seal started leaking this summer. I bought four seals and 2 tubes of grease for just under $200 to replace all 4 seals, and re-grease. The price for their grease is nuts. I think the vault hubs are very good, and if someone doesn’t like repacking the bearings or couldn’t every couple years I would go for one of the hubs mentioned. If you don’t mind doing it save yourself some money and buy some more crankbaits.

I have been happy with my Ultra Tow hubs, I’ve had them on the boat trailer for about 4 years now.

I never rebuild hubs. For the price of a new hub and ease of install, I buy the Northern Tool Ultra Tow XTP hubs and just replace…I know many people scoff at that, and I don’t care. Maybe this can be considered an unpopular opinion?

I have them on my ice house, boat and both utility trailers with zero issues.

404 ERROR wrote:

For the price of a new hub and ease of install, I buy the Northern Tool Ultra Tow XTP hubs and just replace…

I’ve done the same, but it unfortunately gets much pricier when you have disc brakes.

Thanks guys! I decided to go with the new hubs from northern tool. Few more bucks now vs new bearings and repacking, but the flush system should provide better maintenance down the road vs bearing buddies in between repacks.

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