Maintenance of D52 Nev-R Lube Axles with Alcan Springs

[jd1923]

This maintenance can be completed in 2 hours (by a young experienced mechanic), or you could take most of the day, taking your time. I did the curbside yesterday and did the other side today. It's not a whole lot of work. The second side went very fast today (90 min), having the tools ready.

This is just what I did and I'm sure others may do more or less. It's all the required maintenance in what makes sense to me, in my experience. IMO this maintenance should be conducted annually, or bi-annually for those who tow 10K +/- miles in a year. Following is a suggested 10-Step suspension maintenance procedure: 

1) On level ground, jack up one side of the trailer, using the rear leveler jack, while the Oliver is hitched to the tow vehicle (mandatory for safety).

2) Spin each tire to see if it rolls freely. Listen carefully for any unusual sounds. Try to wobble each wheel left to right (3-9 clock positions) and top to bottom (6 - 12) to observe any free-play. There should no observable free-play with the Nev-R Lube bearings.

3) Remove the lug nuts on both wheels with impact (no impact, loosen prior to lifting). Place a jack stand under rear axle, close to wheel, for safety since your body will be under the trailer to do much of this work (see pic1).

4) Use compressed air to blow through all openings of the braking plates to remove all shoe dust from the interior of the brake drums. Wear safety glasses and stay upwind from the cloud of brake dust. Blow around until you see nothing but clean air.

5) Grease all six (6) wet bolts, plus two (2) grease fittings on the EZ Flex. Use a power grease gun if available with a LockNLube coupler attached. Add just enough grease to see it ooze from an edge. Wipe up all excess grease. A straight-blade screwdriver helps to remove old grease from recessed areas. Wipe grease fittings before and after and place caps back on (I go without caps).

6) Torque all suspension bolts to Alcan specs. 90 ft-lb for U-bolts, 80 ft-lb for the 3 end-points, 65 ft-lb on the shackle wet-bolts. Once the U-bolts set and do not need tightening, the nuts rust into place and you will not need to check again in the future (not true for the wet-bolts). I go lighter torque than Alcan specs on the wet-bolts, 70 and 58 ft-lbs which is an eighth (12%) lighter. 80 and 65 just seem high.

7) Check drag on the drums. They should contact the shoes ON and OFF when spinning (shoes installed are not perfectly round). If they do not drag at all, the self-adjuster is not tightening properly (see pic2 brake assembly, adjuster at bottom). Mine were all dragging just right on like-new axles installed Aug 2025, now at 3600 miles.

There are two inspection ports on the backside. Unfortunately, there is no way to reach the gear to adjust it, due to the Oliver wide leaf/shock absorber plate. If adjusters are not working, the hub/drum must be removed, thus becoming a full brake job.

8] Pull the trailer emergency brake switch and turn the drums until they stop. Check amperage draw at each wheel, placing amp meter clamp around ANY single wire behind wheel. Amperage should be 3A +/- without much difference between wheels. My LF wheel was 3.1A (LOL, the one I hear skid when the brake controller gain is up too high)! The other three read 2.8A, the two main brake wires coming out of the streetside Oliver hull read 6.1A front and 5.8A rear. Looks good to me!

9) Remove gravel from the tread of both tires, using a thin flat-blade screwdriver, while inspecting for tread wear, tire defects and foreign objects (I do this with all our vehicles every time wheels are removed for any reason and have found many screws and other sharp metal objects in tire treads, sometimes causing slow leaks that can be fixed now vs. getting worse later on the highway).

10) Mount rims, lower hull to get rim close, making it easy to place wheel on studs. Use impact on light setting and snug up lug nuts evenly. Lower hull to sit on wheels, remove leveler blocks, and torque lugs to 90 ft-lbs.

Repeat all 10 steps on the other side of the trailer.

Let me know if I missed something or other suggestions! 😎

 

Edited 22 hours ago by jd1923

[2008RN]

Looks pretty good to me,  Combines both the greasing wet bolts and physical inspection of operations  and rough cleaning without remove the drums.  I have never removed a drum with sealed bearings,  I have done many vehicles over my years that have the old style tappered bearing.  How easy is it to pull the drums of the Never-lube bearings (sealed bearings)? 

Even if everything looks good physically at some point the drum needs to be removed to check wear of drum  and brake shoes.   The nice thing with normal vehicles that have sealed bearing they have brake calipers, pads and rotors, being able to check everything with external inspections. 

[jd1923]

6 minutes ago, 2008RN said:

Looks pretty good to me,  Combines both the greasing wet bolts and physical inspection of operations  and rough cleaning without remove the drums.  I have never removed a drum with sealed bearings,  I have done many vehicles over my years that have the old style tapered bearing.  How easy is it to pull the drums of the Never-lube bearings (sealed bearings)? 

Even if everything looks good physically at some point the drum needs to be removed to check wear of drum  and brake shoes.   The nice thing with normal vehicles that have sealed bearing they have brake calipers, pads and rotors, being able to check everything with external inspections. 

Thank you, Bob! LOL, you and I both, have "done many vehicles over my years!" I've done 3 brake jobs this year alone and I want to quit having to do brake jobs around here, OMG! 🤣

Removing the drum is very easy on the Nev-R Lube axles, and no red grease mess! It's just not something to do when less than one year old with 3600 miles, as in my case. I will likely do so at 3rd inspection. Your question is a good one though, a GREAT addition to this post and soon I'll add this step to the above procedure. 😎

Remove the bearing cap, the small outer circlip and spindle nut is all it takes (more info in post linked below). One trick is retorquing the spindle nut afterwards. I got confirmation from Dexter (via Lew at Alcan), that these spindle nuts can be reused (should replace after 2-3 uses). To retorque, I would mount the wheel, lower the tire touching the ground and torque to 155 ft-lb (remove wheel again if you mount center caps). Then replace the circlip and dust cap and that's all there is to it.