No cute little fawn photos here … I’ve got a long list of trailer and truck chores to do before I head out for 2021 camping!
Every spring, six weeks or more before my first camping trip, I do my springtime maintenance on both the truck and the trailer. Doing that work that far ahead of my first camping trip gives me several weeks after the inspection and work to order parts, then complete any repairs needed, etc, prior to my first camping trip.
The list of work performed, items checked, stuff done, is long. From A to Z, anodes to zincs, I check everything. What?! 🙂 some of you will know that zincs ARE anodes, so I was pulling your legs there a bit with the “anodes to zincs” comment. But let’s just say I check and adjust and empty and fill and grease and clean and tighten (or loosen, as needed) just about everything in the trailer … from stem to stern! Including the anode/zinc in the water heater. 🙂
One of the items on my list is to add grease to the trailer’s wheel bearings. This year, 2021, will be my fourth year with this trailer. Some people pull the entire wheel/brake system apart every year to grease wheel bearings, but I don’t. I did all of that when I first brought this brand new trailer home.
I pulled all four wheel/tire/brake/bearing/seal assemblies apart in order to check everything and make sure they were ok (they weren’t, but I fixed what needed fixing). After that initial, thorough inspection and repair/adjustment, I knew the brakes and the bearings and the seals and the grease were in good shape, so now I simply pump in an additional wee bit of wheel bearing grease each spring and check the brake shoe clearance and operation, and call it good. After my fifth year of ownership, I will again disassemble the entire wheel/brake assembly and will then replace seals and bearings and brake shoes and such, so I will know the entire system is good to go for another five years.
The photo above is of one of the wheels/tires when my trailer was brand new. The center shiny protrusion needs to come off in order to add grease to the bearings. So … the entire wheel/tire needs to come off.
The photo below is how I remove one wheel/tire at a time. [The “wheel”, by the way, is the shiny big round aluminum/metal thing … the “tire” is the black rubber thing that mounts onto/around the wheel.]
I hitch the trailer to the truck, then back the trailer so the back tires/axle are raised up on the yellow plastic supports. This allows the wheels/tires on the front axle to spin freely … all without the need to jack the trailer up. In the photo above, the wrench/socket on the ground on the left is a torque wrench that I use to loosen the wheel’s lug nuts and then, later, when I reinstall the wheels/tires, I’ll use the torque wrench again to adjust the tightness of the lug nuts to the specified torque value. My “creeper” (the wooden device with wheels underneath it) is ready for me to lie on so I can easily scoot under the trailer to adjust the trailer brakes and do other maintenance chores.
But let’s talk about the bearing grease first. The photo below was taken after the wheel/tire was removed from the forward axle. The big round dark grey metal thing in the photo below is the brake drum … the brake shoes, that actually stop the trailer, are inside that drum. I’m not going to take the drum off this spring because I’m not going to replace ALL of the wheel bearing grease; I’m just going to add a wee bit.
At the very center of the drum, you can see a black rubber “seal/cap” which can be pried off very easily with a small screwdriver. After that comes off, then you would see the zerk fitting for the bearing grease. I pump in 2 to 3 pumps of new grease, no more. Some people, some YouTube videos, will tell you to use this method to pump ALL the wheel bearing grease out of the system, keep pumping until the old grease has come through the front seal and is coming out of that center portion of the drum (gobs of it!!), and keep pumping until the new grease (usually bright red) starts coming through. That’s a really bad idea. If the rear seal in the brake assembly is leaking, you will get grease all over the brake shoes and they will not work, and you won’t know it … they will also overheat, and you won’t know it. The ONLY way to change all of the grease in the system is to remove the drum, remove the seals, remove the shoes, remove the bearings … check everything and then replace things one item at a time, fill the bearings with grease by hand, add more grease in the areas where needed depending on your system, and then put the rest of those systems back together, finally putting the brake drum back on, all the while making sure the rear wheel bearing is not leaking.
This year, I’m not replacing the entire amount of wheel bearing grease. As mentioned, I pump in just a tiny bit of new grease each year since even wheel bearing grease will “evaporate” with time. And then I check brake shoe clearance and make sure the shoes are working properly and actually stopping the trailer. I also carry a digital point-and-shoot axle/hub thermometer which I use on every trip to check the temperature of the hub of the wheel. It takes just a second or two to do that, but could prevent a fire.
All right! That’s probably more than most of you want to know, but maybe it will help some of you.
One of the reasons I bought a trailer with twin axles is because it is incredibly easy to raise one axle or the other without jacking up the entire trailer … just use the yellow plastic support squares and then use the tongue jack of the trailer to either raise or lower the tongue, depending on which axle/wheel/tire you want to raise off the ground. And, same reason … it’s a whole lot easier to lift one of the axles to change a flat tire (rather than jacking up the entire trailer) especially when you’re on the shoulder of the freeway, and especially if you’re on a hill and it would be extremely dangerous to jack up the entire trailer! AND, my Escape Trailer Industries trailer is rated to run on just one axle, so I could, if needed, remove the wheels/tires on either the front or the rear axle and then drive slowly, on just the two tires on one axle, to a tire repair shop … no need to wait for a tow truck by the side of the freeway.
Adding a wee bit of wheel bearing grease and checking the brake operation are just two of the spring maintenance items I perform each year.
Here’s a photo (below) that I took during a brake adjustment. I use a small screwdriver to access and rotate the shoe adjuster assembly through one of the holes (RED arrows) in the backing plate of the assembly, while rotating the tire/wheel by hand at the same time (while taking this photo, I’m lying on that creeper and am completely under the trailer). After the shoes are adjusted, it’s a very good idea to plug those holes with purpose-made rubber plugs to keep dirt and moisture out of the brake assembly.
My trailer did not come with those rubber plugs; check yours and then measure the holes and then buy some plugs at your local automotive store.
Hmm, and that reminds me of yet another reason NOT to jack up the trailer to do this maintenance … jack assemblies can fail. By using those yellow plastic supports under one wheel/tire/axle to lift the trailer (you can stack them four or five or six high), then the trailer absolutely will not come crashing down on you (or me). I don’t relish getting squashed. Use a jack if you must, but please do not then crawl under whatever it is that you’ve jacked up. When I was a truck mechanic with FedEx, a mechanic in another district didn’t follow safety procedures, a simple piece of equipment broke, and an entire huge FedEx truck fell on him. Not anyone’s idea of a good time. Some people will tell you that jacking up a vehicle/trailer and then putting jack stands under it, and then crawling under the vehicle is ok. The pin in a jack stand can break, trust me. Please don’t crawl under anything that isn’t fully, completely, solidly supported.
Enough drama, ok? Let’s just get ready to go camping and have some fun!
I’m sure all of you have your own maintenance checklists. And y’all know how to defrost the freezer and clean the windows and check the battery fluid levels and tire pressure (don’t forget to check the spare tire) and clean the floor inside the trailer and spray a little lube into the door latch and stuff like that. Check the fire extinguisher date, check your running lights, replace all the little batteries in flashlights, clocks, smoke alarms, etc. Take your tow vehicle in for full service and inspection, if you don’t do it yourself. And, last but not least … polish those aluminum wheels until they sparkle! 🙂
If anyone wants more detailed technical info about what I do, let me know. I’ll admit right up front that I am a stickler for preventive maintenance.
At the end of the day, put some fresh food in that trailer, add a few beverages of choice, gather up a few favorite tunes to play in your tow vehicle while you’re cruising down the road, and then just GO! You’ve taken excellent care of your rig … let her take care of you. Go see the world!
Speaking of seeing the world, here’s a video blog post (below) from one of my favorite video boating blogs. It’s two fellows in Britain who purchased a brand new custom-built canal narrowboat and are cruising fulltime. Their stories are fun, their videos are very well-done, and the countryside and the canals are gorgeous!
If any of you wonder about turning some of those sharp! canal corners in such a long boat (42 feet long this one is, I think), yes indeed the boat does have an electric bow-thruster that, with just a push of a button, moves the bow of the boat to the left or right.
So … go! Pack up your kit, whatever that is, whatever your dream might be, wherever you are, just pack up and go!
Thank you! I’ve had three mechanics tell me one thing and want to charge me a lot of money, and another fourth mechanic tell me something completely different but not charge me any where near as much money and yet it’s exactly what you were saying about the wheel bearing grease. I’m going to take my trailer to that fourth mechanic. He also suggested that I have him disassemble the brake and bearing assemblies some time this winter after I’m done camping for the year so he can inspect and replace anything needed, just like you said. My trailer is seven years old and has never had any of those systems checked. My trailer has only one axle. Really great info Ann. Thank you!
One sure hears all kinds of different info from different repair shops and different mechanics. I like to think they all have our best interests in mind, but sometimes it seems that either they don’t have the experience we want, or they simply don’t want to admit that they don’t have the experience, or they are more interested in their income than in the repair outcome. We do need to give all of them the benefit of the doubt, right? But in the end, we each get to decide who to trust.
I recently took my trailer to a repair shop near my home, only to have a really bad experience with them. They sounded good at first, but when I picked up the trailer it was filthy, a few things were broken, and there was yellow fluid in my toilet (truth!). They did fix what I asked them to fix, but I will never be back.
So try out that fourth mechanic, Susan, I hope he’s excellent.
Wow. I wouldn’t know how to add bearing grease myself, but now I know enough to know if it’s being done properly by someone else!
That’s probably 90% of the battle … maybe not knowing how to do something yourself, but knowing how the work should be done and a general idea of what it should cost. Also, knowing the lingo, knowing how to talk with a mechanic helps a great deal.
What a great feature to know you can manage with one axle if need be. I learned so much about brakes and maintenance today. You do a great job of explaining such an important part of the trailer!
I didn’t realize how chance-y it is to use a jack. Yikes! My husband’s fishing days would be over! teehee.
Oh, I bet your husband is extraordinarily careful! He has fish yet to catch, after all … and he has you. 🙂
Great video blog of the canal boat guys. I’ve been watching from the beginning. You find great stuff, Ann. Thank you for sharing!
You’re welcome, Shawn. Their videos make me think about renting a canal boat in England or Scotland for a month or so, in good weather of course. 🙂
Years ago, my husband used to replace all the wheel bearing grease by pumping all of it through just like you described, without taking anything apart but simply pumping it all through. It was a mess, but so many people told him to do that. And then we were driving down the road and came over the crest of a hill and there was an emergency medical vehicle stopped part way down the hill in front of us taking care of people from a car accident that was in the left lane. My husband slammed on the brakes, then activated the dash controls for the trailer brakes, but the trailer brakes didn’t work, they just kept rolling. We pulled over onto the shoulder and avoided hitting anyone, but if my husband hadn’t pulled over we would have slammed into the emergency vehicle. No trailer brakes! We took the trailer to a shop who told us the brakes were full of wheel bearing grease. Ever since then, my husband does exactly what you do, Ann. Sure wish all that really terrible information wasn’t online.
Oh my gosh I’m glad everyone was ok, Marge. Yes, your experience was a perfect example of why no one should change wheel bearing grease without taking everything apart. Quick thinking on his part to pull off to the right shoulder. Glad everyone, including the two of you, were safe. Thanks for sharing that experience! Safe travels.