Bearing Buddies or Baddies?

From: Dave & Francesca Kautz (dfkautz@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Feb 14 2000 - 22:23:38 PST


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It was a rainy weekend and, feeling restless, I decided to undertake the
dreaded trailer wheel bearing maintenance. This involved running out to
the driveway in between showers, pulling off the wheels and hubs and
scurrying back into the relative warmth of the garage.

What a messy job. It was clear almost immediately that water had gotten
into the hubs from the milky color of the grease (kind of a dark green
when it's clean). Now, keep in mind as this tale unwinds that I did this
job just less than two years ago and replaced all the bearings and seals
with new parts at that time.

Here's what I found. Both seals were trashed, both in the same way. On
each one a long section of the rubber "lip" had torn free of the seal
and was hanging like a piece of string. I suppose I should have
anticipated this since every time I added grease to the bearing buddies
I ended up with grease speckles all over the bottom of the boat, the
wheels, the fenders and the trailer. The races of the inner bearings
(the ones next to the seals) showed obvious signs of corrosion and
didn't turn smoothly when rotated by hand - and these are not ancient
parts, as I mentioned before they are less than two years old. The outer
bearings looked and felt fine. A good thing too, since I only had two
spare bearings.

I cleaned all the parts to be re-used, packed the bearings and
reassembled the hubs following the directions in the Champion Trailers
catalog. The new seals were of a slightly different design, having two
lips on each seal instead of one (like the parts I removed). I put on
standard dustcaps instead of the bearing buddies - I'm going to try it
that way for the next season and see if the seals hold up better.

I'm a little suspicious that the internal pressure generated by the
bearing buddies may have contributed to the early failure of those
seals. My trailer has the little 8 inch wheels, so even at 60 mph those
hubs are really spinning. Perhaps the extra pressure and the high speed
cause too much friction and heat at the seal lip? I guess we can't
expect otherwise, that after the integrity of the seal is gone the rest
goes to he*l quickly.

So what's the real scoop on Bearing Buddies? The little spiel printed on
the package makes sense, but on a replacement hub kit at West Marine it
said quite clearly not to use them, voids the warranty, etc., etc..

As I mentioned above, I'm going to try a season without the buddies and
compare but does anyone have a "been there, done that" story to relate?

Dave Kautz
P-15 #1632, Tilly Lucy
Palo Alto, CA



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