THSCC Forums

Well, after Laurinburg I drove to girlfriend's house in Raleigh. After dropping her off at the airport in her Explorer on Monday morning, I headed down 85 to Charlotte towing my tire trailer, as well as her dogs in the back. With about 20 miles to go, I felt the trailer swaying all over the place. I pulled over and checked for flats on the trailer; everything looked good. I figured the grooved cement was causing the sway. I got home and parked the rig.

Last night I went to put the trailer in the garage, when I notice the trailer wheels looked like this: | \

The passenger side wheel must have had massive bearing failure, although not from lack of grease (had bearing buddy's). The best that I can tell is that one of the bearings began to disintegrate and threw pieces all throughout the sealed unit. Fortunately, I have extra hubs and bearings, but it would have been a pain in the arse to replace on the side of the road. Especially considering one of the bearings 'fused' itself to the axles. What joy!

So this is your friendly reminder to check your bearings -AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

Hey Shawn, you check the bearings on the trailer recently

Aaron, glad you found it now rather then on the way to some national event.

-Tom

I agree.. I think I will need to get a new set of bearing buddy's, for this one has scoring all along the inside, although, I doubt it will affect the performance of the unit. - AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

I doubt it, all the bb's really do is hold in more grease right? As long as you make sure that its on snug you should be good to go.

-Tom

I had a wheel bearing on our tire trailer give out last spring. Noticed it when we got to the first Ft Myers event. The bearing disintegrated, but fortunately it did not fuse the race to the axle, probably due to the large "clearance" between the diameter of the axle and the bearing, not what you'd call high precision CNC machining. I bought another set of bearings at a Northern Tool store there on Monday then changed it on Fri of the second weekend (We stored the trailer on site between events.) When I snugged up the axle nut to seat the bearing I heard a loud POP. I disassembled it again and found the race had cracked! (see high precision above) Fortunately I had also bought a spare hub and bearing assembly when I bought the new bearings, so I took the old hub off and put the new complete assembly on in it's place. What I did discover in doing so is the replacement "high speed" hub assemblies are of a significantly better quality than the ones that originally came with the trailer kit. I bought another pair of them when we got home, changed out the other original hub bearing assembly and carry the third one with us in the trailer as a spare. I now make it a habit to touch the trailer hubs to see if they are getting warm at every gas stop. Bearing buddies are more than just a larger grease resevoir, they have a diaphram in them that is supposed to keep a small amount of pressure on the grease to keep centrifugal force from throwing the grease away from the bearing and keep water out of the hub (they are meant to be used on boat trailers where the axles are submerged regularly). I am impressed that these little trailers that were meant to be pulled behind a lawn tractor hold up as well as they do at 80+ mph expressway runs for hrs on end!

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