Wheel bearing field repair

[Martyn]

I don't know. I never take the trailer off-road, just on some really bad dirt roads. However, I agree this one takes a real beating - I think the suspension is WAY too stiff. It is a little pop-up tent trailer that weighs about 1500 lbs, and it has a Torflex suspension that is designed for much more weight. I don't think Starcraft intended it to go off pavement . I will never forget, shortly after we bought it 5 years ago, we were towing it down Woody Mtn Road, in our old Range Rover. The road is dirt, but it felt pretty smooth. I happened to look in the rear view mirror, and was amazed at how much the trailer was banging around. So, I slowed way down.

Bearing maintenance is now higher on my list of priorities.

Read our article on Suspension at http://www.adventuretrailers.com/suspension.html and you'll see that your problems are compounded by the Torflex axle. It sets up a bouncing effect.

Wash board is by far the most destructive off-roading to a trailer, if at some time you upgrade your axle go with 3500 lb bearings in an axle de-rated to 1500 lbs.

 

[Monstero]

Another very effective way to get a race out of a knuckle is to run a weld bead around the inside the inner race that is stuck in there. The weld contracts the race and a few hits with the hammer and its out. Better than loosing a skin with a hammer and cursing for half hour hitting it.

 

[ntsqd]

Another very effective way to get a race out of a knuckle is to run a weld bead around the inside the inner race that is stuck in there. The weld contracts the race and a few hits with the hammer and its out. Better than loosing a skin with a hammer and cursing for half hour hitting it.

I used to use this trick frequently when I worked as a Fabricator. We used it to remove insert valve seats from cylinder heads. With a TIG (no filler wire) I turned the heat UP! I ran *just* short of boiling the seat metal. They fall right out after that. I would expect an outer bearing race to do the same thing.

Re: MGB wheel bearing shims, IME once that bearing pre-load is set then even changing the bearings doesn't affect the pre-load enough to matter or even be detectable. What you do have to watch for is wear of the register surfaces. If those wear or distort, or a different hub is fitted, then re-shimming is required.

 

[James86004]

Read our article on Suspension at http://www.adventuretrailers.com/suspension.html and you'll see that your problems are compounded by the Torflex axle. It sets up a bouncing effect.

Wash board is by far the most destructive off-roading to a trailer, if at some time you upgrade your axle go with 3500 lb bearings in an axle de-rated to 1500 lbs.

Martyn, yesterday afternoon I spent a while on your web site trying to find out about your suspension system. I saw the page on putting your air springs on a military trailer, but not the page you reference above. There is no link to it from you home page that I could find. It is a great page, and speaking from my professional side (I am a mechanical engineer), I am very impressed with your work.

I wish I had bought one of your trailers instead of what we got. It sounds like the trailer we wanted wasn't available in the spring of 2002.

 

[BiG BoB]

I have been thinking about incorportating a spindle, bearings and hub into my spare tire carrier

I just put a setup like that on my trailer last week.

It's a piece of square section, that has a stub axle attached. The stub axle is the same as what my trailer uses, and mounted to it I have a spare, packed, ready to go hub. Gives a little bit of piece of mind

Sean

 

[Martyn]

Martyn, yesterday afternoon I spent a while on your web site trying to find out about your suspension system. I saw the page on putting your air springs on a military trailer, but not the page you reference above. There is no link to it from you home page that I could find. It is a great page, and speaking from my professional side (I am a mechanical engineer), I am very impressed with your work.

I wish I had bought one of your trailers instead of what we got. It sounds like the trailer we wanted wasn't available in the spring of 2002.

The suspension page either has to be accessed directly or from the box to the right of the rotating pictures on the adventuretrailers.com home page.

It's not an ideal way to access it right now, but I'm in the middle of creating a knowledge center that is specific to that site. At the moment the Resource Library page is on our atreport.com site and is a link. As with most things I though I'd have it all done by now.

 

[UK4X4]

Even new bearings an hubs can have issues...the chinese use something that smells like grease, looks like grease....but simply gets hot and dribbles out.

Just bought your axle, grease well with waterproof grease in a diferent color, lubricate untill the pork fat colour grease disapears.....

grease again and adjust after a month

So many trailer accidents are caused by the simple lack of maintenance, wheels falling off and vehicles rolling.

Even if you have not used the trailer....its sat in the sun in most states...

re-grease before use...you'll be surprised how much has "dissapeared" whilst doing nothing

 

[ntsqd]

FWIW my most dismal bearing failure occurred while using "marine boat trailer grease". No longer do I use it for anything.

I now use disc brake wheel bearing grease in everything of DD or so status, and Redline CV Joint Grease in those bearings that could really create a problem if they failed.

I started using CV Joint grease in highly loaded bearings after talking to a (then) Winston Cup chief fabricator. He described how for the 500 mile big oval races they would buy a case of the RF outer wheel bearings and races. Then they'd send them all out for X-Ray and those that passed that got run through their sophisticated Metrology Dept's dimensional inspection process. The few remaining candidates were ranked in order of preference. The No. 2 bearing & race were put in for qualifying. The No. 1 bearing and race were put in for the race. Prior to a tribology expert putting them onto CV joint grease they would load the bearing with off the shelf wheel bearing grease & pray that the bearing would hold together long enough to finish the race. Sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't.
Once they started using the CV Joint grease the bearings always finished the race. They were junk at the end, but they finished.

Incidentally he also told me that they've since switched to using the DuPont Krytox grease and the 500 mile bearings come home ready to be used in some practice sessions before needing to be recycled. Great stuff, but I doubt many Overlanders will want to spring $120 for a 8 oz. tube of grease.

 

[James86004]

That is a fascinating story.

Once they started using the CV Joint grease the bearings always finished the race. They were junk at the end, but they finished.

Incidentally he also told me that they've since switched to using the DuPont Krytox grease and the 500 mile bearings come home ready to be used in some practice sessions before needing to be recycled. Great stuff, but I doubt many Overlanders will want to spring $120 for a 8 oz. tube of grease.

CV joint grease has a lot of molybdenum in it, or "Molly-be-damned" as my buddy calls it.

I am really puzzled by the Krytox. It is almost a bad word around here. It is low outgassing grease, so we tried it in the vacuum of our mirror cell. Its lubricating qualities are poor, so we were getting a lot of sticktion in our actuators. We swapped it out for Braycote, (which took over a month) and everything works smoothly now.

 

[ntsqd]

My guess, partly based on the DuPont description of it being "essentially liquid teflon", is that the high heat encountered in that application made it work better than it did for yours.
:dunno:
Yours isn't the first bad experience with Krytox that I've run across. Seem to recall a friend who used to design E-Beam inspection chambers for KLA-Tencor also having trouble with it.

I've been very happy with the Redline product in wheel bearings and yota Birfs. If I could figure out how to get that color out of some jeans, I could be seen in public in them again......

 

[James86004]

My guess, partly based on the DuPont description of it being "essentially liquid teflon", is that the high heat encountered in that application made it work better than it did for yours.

True. Our application is between -20 and +20 degrees C. The -20 spec causes more problems than the +20.

 

[hoss390]

Stuck Bearing race

When you have a race stuck like that drill through the race but not into the stub axle and take a cold chisel and try to cut the 2 sides of the race . this makes the race crack and loosen to be able to get it of. I always carry a cordless drill with me for this reason and have used it many times.