I have a few question about these.

Do both inner and outer bearing get grease? I have a 14k equipment trailer, and for some reason I am having a hard time locating seals when I need them. I am very good about brake checks/adjustments and bearing adjustments. I do it once a year, but would like some added lube for in-between. So I guess Im asking do they get the grease to where it needs to be?

 

Doing it once a year should be plenty. If you get too much grease in the hub, it will start going past the seals and then all over the brakes.

 

Does grease get to the inner bearing?

 

Don't bother with the bearing buddies; use Valvoline Sythetic grease. I went 4 years and about 3-4k miles before checking the bearings. I only had to replace one set of bearings, and the was only precautionary as I didn't like the scorings. Never added grease.

Two things to keep in mind:
1) Why add grease? Is it going somewhere? If it is, it's ooozing out the seal, onto the brakes. i.e. you are using too much grease & wasting your brake shoes. There needs to be some air gap in there for expansion.

2) Is this a boat trailer? No...I use a "bearing lube" axle on my boat trailer that has a zerk on the axle that is intended to flush some grease from the inner bearing to the outer. This has the effect of flushing waterd grease away from the bearings so the bearings last longer. You could replace your current axles with "bearing lube" axles, if you wanted to spend about $150 per axle.

Do some experiments to prove this to yourself: Inspect the bearings at increasing invervals, until you find a happy medium where you feel the bearings need to be replaced. Set that as your service interval. This way you will reduce the chance of having a bearing failure.

Also, I can't say it enough....Use a HIGH QUALITY SYNTHETIC grease. Synthetics last MUCH better under heat and shear stress loads than conventional greases. I prefer Valvoline Synthetics.

HTH

Tony

 

Best feature on our current 5th wheel? For sure, one of them is the Dexter Nev-R-Lube axles!!

Rusty

 

I have a 12k utility trailer, with brakes on 1 axle. I am going to give them a try. They have a special seal that you can get, that, in theory, keeps grease off the brakes. It just makes sense that if you keep 3psi of grease on the bearings, they will not get wet or lose lube.
Where does the grease go? It will break down with time & weight, Even Syn is not bulletproof.
My $.02

 

Bearing buddies suck.. and no, they never seem to get grease to the inner bearing. When I bought my trailer and pulled the hubs, the inners had very old grease in them, the outers were fine.