Trailer bearings...it about that time...

[steved]

Well, after five years from building it and well over 50k cross country miles, I decided I had better check the bearings in my small work trailer. I simply slapped the axle underneath it with a little extra grease in the bearings and ran it.

The axle is comprised of the tubes an spindles from a Dana 60. Overkill for a trailer that weighs under 1500#s most times, but I wanted eight lugs to match the truck. I drove a wooden dowel into the spindles to plug them, and cut a set of older 16-spline D60 axles for the flanges. I did install zerks in the flanges, but I know I have put at least three kinds of grease in those alone, not to mention whatever the grease that was already there.

As far as I know, the bearings and grease could have 500k on them...the axle was out of a 1974 pickup I scrapped and it wasn't that truck's original axle, i have no idea how many miles it actually had on it. They don't run hot, in fact; they run fairly cool. I wasn't too concerned about it since the axle is overkill for all it actually carries.

Figured since I will be putting at least 15k on it over the next few months, I better with the program. I bought two new seals from Advance Auto. As for grease, not many choices appealed to me...I would have preferred PZ 707L, but decided to try Lucas Red n Tacky since I couldn't find the PZ. Didn't see any harm in using Lucas in this application.

On a side note, the seals were interesting. One is a National and the other is a Motor City (both marketed by Federal-Mogul [F-M]). The difference between the two? The Motor City is made in Taiwan and the National is made in the USA...and while physically similar, they are different colors and only the National has markings.

So that's tomorrow's project...new seals and a repack on the trailer!