Wheel bearing Grease

93mastercraft wrote:
My axles are AK-LO Duralube bearing/hubs. Does any one have experience with those? I don't have the EZ lubes.

I have three of those axles under my rig and I had to replace 8 of the 12 shoes due to grease contamination. The previous owner overgreased them and it blew past the seals. Did he follow the directions or not I don't know but the hubs were not full of grease when I pulled them.

Allworth wrote:
Funny, with all of the Titanium owners who are running EZ-Lubes, none have reported a bearing failure. If you do it right, you CANNOT blow out the rear seal.
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I have the EZ Lube axles and use the system. But I disagree with your statement. It is definitely possible to push grease past the seal. Look at the diagram in the Dexter literature. The grease goes thru the inlet port to the area between the rear seal and the rear bearing. The grease has to flow thru the rear bearing to get to the rest of the hub and front bearing. If the grease is pumped too fast and builds too much pressure behind the bearing and on the rear seal, it can definitely push grease past the seal. You definitely would not want to use an air gun. Nor would you want to pump a manual gun too fast and hard.

My axles are AK-LO Duralube bearing/hubs. Does any one have experience with those? I don't have the EZ lubes.

There have been many posts and threads on EZ Lube hubs. I've had some experience with these devices and consider them an improvement over other devices such as Bearing Buddies where spring loaded tension continuously tries to force grease toward the seal. I have a 5th wheel and a tandem axle boat trailer. I think the EZ Lube hubs are absolutely great on a boat trailer. The constant submersion in water with sometimes hot brake drums is really hard on bearing cavities. It's a constant battle. My current boat trailer has disc brakes and I really think this is the best type for keeping an eye on the rear seal. You can actually look behind the wheel and see if the grease is coming out of the seal. It's not always been easy like this, for decades I had drum brakes on boats and you could never see when the rear seal had failed unless you pulled the drum. Seals do let go sometimes after a few seasons and you can just pump grease onto the brake shoes.

With my 5th wheel I had a bad experience with it after purchasing it from the original owner. It was two seasons old. He had been "grease gun happy" and pumped so much grease in the EZ Lubes that all four brake clusters were covered. Needless to say I had practically no brakes. There is a proceedure to grease EZ Lube hubs, you must spin the wheel as you apply grease. Also grease will expand after it gets hot with the brakes heating up in mountain driving and this can actually push out on the rubber cap or also can apply pressure to the rear seal!! Once the seal is breached it will continue to leak grease onto the brakes.

In summation I would caution those who are always shooting grease into the hub. You hand pack your bearings on the tow vehicle and they are good for years. Without backing the trailer into water like a boat trailer, why would you need to always be greasing a travel trailer?? I have never used my EZ Lube feature on my 5th wheel. It's just a selling feature for those folks who do no like to hand pack bearings or cannot do it themselves and get ripped off by mechanics to have it done. The video link in one of the above posts above has a promotional video from Dexter and by the way did you notice they used a BOAT trailer in the example. EZ Lubes are great on boats and not necessary on RV's. For those who pumped several tubes at one maintenance session I would highly recommend you pull each hub and see if the brakes are contaminated. Grease on brake shoes is a bad thing.

X2, fj12ryder. 50% failure rate is absurd.

I just wish those rubber "covers" they use were of better quality. I've replaced mine once because the original set was falling apart, and the second set isn't far behind.

ScottG wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:

ScottG wrote:

nickthehunter wrote:
It sounds like you are talking aobut EZ Lube axles (with the grease zerk in the end of the spindle). If so, it sounds like you filled the whole hub with grease which was not necessary. All you needed to do was grease the bearings. About 5 shots in each wheel would have been sufficient depending on how long its been since you did it last.

Sorry but this isn't accurate. Grease wont flow to the front bearing until the entire hub is full. It takes a ton of grease the first time. You know the front bearing is lubed when you see grease flow out the front of it.
That being said, I would never use this feature. They have about a 50% failure rate even when the directions are followed perfectly. If one just pumps a few shots of grease in without turning the wheel, your almost guaranteed to blow grease past the seal and onto the brakes.

Where did you get the 50% failure rate? And are you talking bearing failure, grease seal failure, spindle failure? Was the procedure followed correctly, or just a bunch of grease pumped in?

Sorry, grease seals failure resulting in grease on friction surfaces.
Where do I get it? Lots and Lots of experience and hours of reading of others experiences. Yes procedures followed by experienced people. It's a bad system that sounds good in theory but fails in real world use.

You will read lots and lots of posts about failures, but how many posts do you read about the ones that work just fine? Nobody posts to say how good their grease seals are holding. :) You have to take all that into account when you start talking about how bad a system is.

If you're not talking about your first hand experience with working on these systems then you're just pulling numbers out of the air when you talk about 50% failure rate.

Funny, with all of the Titanium owners who are running EZ-Lubes, none have reported a bearing failure. If you do it right, you CANNOT blow out the rear seal.

50%????

Are you smoking bearing grease again?

After reading many posts regarding this issue I pulled and repacked all four wheels two weeks ago. Fifth wheel is a 2004, EZ lube, bearings looked like they just came off the shelf, brakes the same. We use the fifth wheel at least 2- 3 thousand miles a year. I have used the EZ lube feature at least once a year since we bought it new. Also, by the way the bearings were marked "made in CHINA!" First time pulling the hubs, did give me a piece of mind however knowing everything thing is right.

Just recently greased my axles with the EZ-Lube system and it took a tube of grease per hub.

I wonder if some of the people questioning this method are thinking it's just dust caps with zert fittings? There is no way on the EZ-Lube axles you can blow out the rear seal.

How often do you repack the wheel bearings in your car or TV? If you don't put the trailer in the water the grease from the factory should last a long time.