How to grease my trailer bearings

[lfadam]

I'm new to trailering but have heard plenty of horror stories about seized bearings and would like to avoid that. My new-to-me '04 SAN 210 came with a tandem axle "Trail-Rite" trailer which has "Trailer Buddy axles." Upon removal of the dust caps, it looks like there is a zerk for each wheel. I went ahead and bought a grease gun and Lucas Marine grease, but have a few questions.

1) I saw a YouTube video showing you should spin the wheel freely while pumping grease to distribute it. Can you jack up the trailer while the boat is on it? Or is that crazy? I would use a heavy duty bottle jack.
2) How much grease? Pump 3 times? Or do I need to cycle through the old grease? Any risk of overfilling it?
3) Anything else I'm not considering here?

[charlesml3]

OK, Bearing Buddies make this very easy. As you add grease, you will see the blue plunger start to move towards you. Out towards the edge. When the blue edge of the plunger is roughly even with the edge of the steel, you're done. That's plenty of grease. There's no need to spin the wheel or anything. The Bearing Buddy applies spring-loaded pressure to grease so it maintains plenty into the bearings.

-Charles

[MN Ryan]

Keep in mind that best practice (in my opinion) is to disassemble, clean, inspect, repack the bearings with grease, and replace the seals each fall. It's not a terribly difficult job, but it can be time consuming, and it's very messy. I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials online.

Is it completely necessary to do it yearly? Perhaps not, but it gives me peace of mind.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with jacking the trailer up with the boat on it. It's likely not any heavier than a full-size truck.

[bturner]

If the goal is to add grease then you can't go wrong with what Charles has suggested. If the goal is to preform maintenance on the bearings of an 18"YO trailer, well then you're far from there.

I just completed what I would call a frame up restoration of the BIL's 05 single axle Boatmate trailer. At 17 years of age and at least 8 years since the last refresh it was really due and took quite a bit more time/effort/money to complete than expected. I have no idea what condition your trailer is in, when it was last serviced or what was done but when I buy used (which is always) I typically like to baseline the boat and the trailer. What does that mean? it means I assume that nothing has ever been done to the boat/trailer and I bring the both up to current maintenance level as if everything on the maintenance list needs to be done.

So on an 18 YO trailer like yours or in the case of the BIL's Boatmate this is what was done on his and what I would suggest at least looking at on yours.....

Wheels/Tires
The trailer wheels were steel and rusting pretty bad. Tires were 8YO. We decided to pull the trigger and replaced all 3 steel wheels (don't forget the spare) with aluminum and replaced all 3 tires with Goodyear Endurance tires.
On yours, check the date on the tires. If older than 4 years you should be looking at replacements. If your wheels are rusting bad you may want to consider replacement.

Brakes
A quick inspection of the master cylinder showed (see picture below) no brake fluid in the reservoir. Worse the bleeders were fused into the calipers and the outer pad was down to less than an 1/8" of pad. I replaced both calipers with a new loaded set that included the pads. I then power flushed the lines with a quart of full synthetic brake fluid between the 2 sides.
On yours, check the brake reservoir. What does the fluid look like (see mine below)? When was it last changed? How much is in it? Most likely the answer is you need at a minimum flush the system.

Wheel bearings
Got lucky here. His trailer has oil bath hubs. On this type of set up you're basically looking for oil in the hubs to start with then carefully inspecting the front and back seals for any leaks. His hubs cleaned up very well, had no corrosion and no leaks. And here is the beauty of oil bath. I removed the drain screw, turned the hub 180 degrees and drained the oil which looked bad. I then refilled with the recommended specific full synthetic bearing oil. I put thread sealant on the thread for the the drain screws and tightened them back up. All done.

On yours. Had this been grease, like yours, the story would have been completely different. Grease does go bad and ages out. Without a history or in the case of the BIL's trailer with a known history of lax maintenance I would pulling those axles apart. Before pulling everything apart I would do my research and get a full set of marine rated double lip seals, a full bearing set and marine grease to do the complete job. I'd also recommend getting at least one spare seal to keep with you should you need it in the future.

Next, I would jack the trailer up (this is always easier with the boat off the trailer if that is an option. If not you can do it with the boat on the trailer). IMO you should be doing this with a floor jack on a level surface and jack stands supporting the trailer especially if you're doing this with the boat on the trailer. The bearings need to come out so you'll need to knock out the seals to get the rears out. I would then clean, closely inspect for wear/damage then re-grease and reassemble.

This is the only way I know of to know the actual condition of the bearing and the grease on a trailer that is as old as yours.

On the BIL's trailer I ended up doing a bunch of paint work to the rusted cross beams that had been chipped up over years of trailering as well as replacing a bunk that had split and re-carpeting all the bunks. I finished it all up with a new bow roller, winch strap, new loading bar pads and added retractable transom straps. All in all I had a very solid week of work on this trailer to get it where he needed it to get back to but it should now be good for another few years.


On yours, I would do an assessment the same as I did for the BIL's trailer. Maybe the trailer is cherry and has been stored inside. This is very rare but possible. If so great, if not start looking at what needs to be fixed, rebuilt or replaced. You don't have to do it all at one time but I would highly recommend doing an honest assessment and making plans to fix any areas that need attention before they end up being an issue on the road.

There's obviously more here than the original grease topic but the point is that there's a ton more to keeping the trailer from failing on the road than pumping in some grease on wheel bearing you have no known history on. It's a start and I applaud your interest in maintaining your trailer but you may want to start looking into going a bit deeper.

Oh, here's a look at the 8YO brake fluid from the right caliper and a shot of what I found in the master cylinder to give you an idea of what you might find.....

[Scooter G]

Beautiful write up as always bturner, and spot on.
Ditto also to MN Ryan.
A bearing overhaul is a relatively inexpensive, time well spent, maintenance item.

[bturner]

Here's a couple more pictures of my "frame up" restoration. I was actually going to document this "light refresh" but panicked when I actually started to have to deal with the rust and paint work. I started this thinking I would just use aggressive rubbing compound and it would be "good enough". Yeah, it didn't and it sucked.

In picture 1 you can see where I taped the axle back behind the curve which was a natural blem line I was using to hide the tape line. I did this as the plan was to paint only the area that needed repair. Remember this was a frame up restoration not a full paint job of the entire trailer. The picture is bad but you can see the front of the cross beam after using 80 grit with my soon to be deceased Ryobi random orbit sander. From here it was more taping, then priming with self etching primer then some Rust-Oleum High performance gloss black.

https://www.rustoleum.com/product-ca...-enamel-spray/

This was the first time I used this stuff and let me tell you it's the best I've ever used. It dries with a high gloss, covers real well and is easy to shoot.

So here's the prep and finish.....

[bturner]

By the time I had the cross bars and axle done I was toast and any real documenting of the product had left my thoughts. Here's one though of all the cross bars done with the new wheels/tires on the trailer. The fenders are off at this point and have been stripped, sanded and primed with self etching primer. I painted the fenders the next day then scratched the heck out of them trying to install them before they were fully dry. I ended up striping done the left one to bare metal again and spotting in the right one no less than 3 times before getting it where I could leave it alone.

[bturner]

Here's more of what I kept running into on this project. From seized bolts and seized bleeders to split bunks what I thought would be a quick weekend project ending up spanning a week of near constant runs to the hardware store for paint materials and a new sander. BIL ended up buying me a new DeWALT cordless sander which just cut hours off the project. This thing was soooo much nicer than my exploded Ryobi.....

https://www.dewalt.com/product/dcw21...nder-tool-only

[bturner]

Some other materials I used that work really well for me.....

Cuda Carpet

https://www.cudapowersports.com/

This stuff was not cheap but it was good. Probably some of the best bunk carpet I've used to date.

Motive Bleeder with marine adapter

https://www.motiveproducts.com/colle...nd-marine-kits

This thing has paid for itself over the years for me about 10 fold. It makes quick work of bleeding a flushing brake lines.

Boat buckles

https://www.amazon.com/BoatBuckle-Re...63562877&psc=1

Bunch of different brands out there but these have been going on all my boat trailers and ones I rebuild.

Traction Pad Material from Sailrite

https://www.sailrite.com/Marine-Foam...dhesive-Backed

I ended up cutting all new traction pads for all the step pad locations including on the tops of the fenders. I've used this stuff before on the last 3 trailers I've done and 3 years later it's holding up very well on the 2 MasterCraft trailers I still see. The 3M glue is incredible. I've used razor knives to cut the stuff with the key being changing out the blades frequently to keep the cuts easy and clean. I used a whole saw to cut the opening for the trailer guides.

That's about it. I need to get a finished picture up of the trailer. It did turn out quite well but by the time it was done, I was done with it and glad to see it gone.

[bturner]

Sorry about the thread jack. Guess I'm too lazy these days to just start my own.....

[Scooter G]

Super nice job on the trailer! Good info.
I love the "weekend" projects that end up owning you (every project that I start)...

[lfadam]

OK, Bearing Buddies make this very easy. As you add grease, you will see the blue plunger start to move towards you. Out towards the edge. When the blue edge of the plunger is roughly even with the edge of the steel, you're done. That's plenty of grease. There's no need to spin the wheel or anything. The Bearing Buddy applies spring-loaded pressure to grease so it maintains plenty into the bearings.

-Charles

Cool so based on where the blue ring is in these pictures, is it sufficiently greased up? Not sure why one is covered in excess grease and the other is clean. Previous owner said it was done last year.

[lfadam]

Thanks bturner, some great info! The previous owner says the trailer was fully serviced last year (who knows what that means). I just know the spare was replaced last year while the other tires are maybe 5 years old. I may replace them in the off season. The boat was garaged over the winters and the bunks look to be in good shape, but there is some rusting / paint work needed on the fenders.

I don't have a good workshop / working area or ability to put the boat in the water and leave it there, making DIY trailer work pretty tough. And honestly don't have much interest in covering myself in grease taking apart the axles. So I may pay someone to baseline the axles / brakes and DIY the prep / paint work on the fenders with everything taped off.

[bturner]

Once the grease pushes the blue ring out any excess grease will push by the ring. What you're seeing is that excess grease.

As much as I would like to have trust in my fellow man the only one I really trust when I buy a used anything from someone I don't consider a really close friend is me. The season is nearing the end so as long as you don't have any long trips planned it is certainly reasonable to let it slide until next season or better yet this fall so you don't have to mess with it in the spring. I'm no fan of routing around in grease either but many of these jobs are harder than you may think to get hired out. You may want to start looking now for a garage that will handle this for you.

If you have to do your fenders check to see if they'll unbolt. It's a ton easier to remove them to strip and paint than to tape and remove the overspray that will get everywhere. Believe me, if you see me taking the time to remove something on a rebuild like this, it was done to same time in the end.

On the workshop.... Wish I did too. Everything on this rebuild was done after moving cars out of the garage to free up space for the mechanical work. All the paint work and sanding were done on the driveway or on the grass. The key there is doing the paint prep in the morning or just before dusk before the wind picked up or the sun was a problem. I try to shoot for about 70 degrees and in a shaded area. I'll also hot coat the paint shooting 3 to 4 coats of paint in one session. That way you have the coverage you need without having to wait 24 hours to shoot another coat. The Rust-Oleum performance paint I used would set up in about 30 seconds for the next coat and was dry to the touch in about 10 minutes. Dried with a high gloss and seems to be tough as nails.

I was screwing around with one of the fenders just before I took it back to see if I could sand out the orange peel. I blocked it with 1000, then 1500, then hit it with the 3 stages of 3M perfect it. It turned out like something approaching a show car type finish, single stage of course but still pretty impressive for spray bomb paint.

[lfadam]

Nice—I hear you on trusting no one. I just texted the previous owner and he says the bearings were repacked (don't know if that means any seals were replaced), all electrical, and tires rotated (+spare replaced). Doesn't sound like brakes were touched so may look at that further. To be honest I don't understand trailer components (e.g. trailer brakes) as well as I know inboard wake boat components so have to wrap my head around some new concepts.

Will definitely see if the fenders unbolt, but I don't believe they do upon quick glance. I live in an apartment so any painting / trailer work will have to be done stealthily at my storage facility.