Learning experience from my first bearing repack.

[2008RN]

Everything went pretty well, thankfully  all of the different things people have written online has helped. The Dexter China made bearing are still looking good at 7K miles. So I repacked the old bearings, in 2 years I will replaced the bearings with Timken.

 

1. I have always packed my bearings by hand, after doing one side of the trailer by hand, I decided to pick up a bearing packer.   I purchased a Lisle from a local auto parts store.   The packer did a good job,  although it was very hard to push done.  I had to put the packer on the floor and push down with all of my upper body.  THis saved me a lot of time vs doing it by hand.  I saw a Gearwrench packer online, but no one had one locally.  The Gearwrench had a smaller diameter than the Lisle. It was still big enough for the Oliver bearing.  The smaller diameter should have made it somewhat easier to press down. I have read that someone used their foot to press down on the Lisle unit, and it worked without breaking it.   
2. I really like the clip to hold the axle nut in place. I thought it was pretty cool over using a cotter pin.
3. The Dexter dust caps are ill fitting at best. To of them almost   I had purchased Balkamp Dust caps from NAPA as suggested in the forum.  I tried putting my first dust cap on with a Dust Cap application tool. I had to pound like H_ll to get it on, Like an idiot I just kept pounding. It’s on now, It is going to be really darn hard to get that off in 2 years.  The caps are suppose to be 1.986” OD,  Balkamp measured out @ 1.998” OD at the outside edge and 1.987-1.990 next to the flange.  The ID of the hub is around 1.975.  That is 0.025 of interference.  I went to NAPA and measure all the caps that they have in stock. They all measured the same.  I decided to use the bench grinder and grind down the OD at a taper.  I took a couple of taps to get it started, and 3 good wacks to set it in place.
4. I had one lug nut that was mangled fro the factory. I had to pound a deep well socket on the lug nut. Once the lug nut was off, I had use a drift punch to get the lug nut off. The outside of the lugs nuts are a thin sheet metal.  I went to a local tire shop and bought enough solid metal chrome lugnuts to replace all cheap lugnuts. They match perfectly with the old lug nuts.  I also bought 2 spares just in case.
5. I was suprised that the tires where not balances.  I got all of the tires balanced. hopefully the trailer will ride smoother.
6. I decided to lube the suspension since very thing is easy to get to.  All of the zerks took grease with the chassis jacked up and wheels of except the 3 zerks around the rear tire and the street side.  I tried jacking up the axel and this didn’t help.  I was resined to pulling apart the rear suspension, but then I thought I lubed everything last year with all tires on the ground.  I put the wheels on, lowered the Oli back down and I was able to get grease on those 3 bolts.  Not sure why?  It is lubed for now.

 

The things I forgot:

• To chalk the emblems on the inside of the chrome dust cap wheel covers. I think it was John Davis who suggested this. Although 2 of the emblems already have a small area where the thick rubber coating is delaminating.  They are good for now, but I may need to try to find some nice looking dust cap wheel covers to replace the originals.
• I completey forgot to get the spare balanced.

 

Sorry for the long winded right up. 

 

[Ray Kimsey]

I repacked the bearings last winter and they were fine at that point, but I plan to replace them this time around. I currently have 15K miles on the trailer and one more trip planned in a couple of weeks. I have the Timken bearings to replace them with ready to go. Like you, I purchased a bearing packer and it worked well. Also when we got our trailer I found out that the tires were not balanced. I contacted Jason and he said the tires were supposed to be balanced, but the supplier had failed to balance the tires.  I took it to a tire dealership and got them balanced.  I think it was something that was just related to the time we got our trailers. Ours is a 2020 that we picked up about the same time as you based on our hull number, 676.