EZ Lube axles/hubs

TBammer wrote:
I just pulled the drums on my ez lubes and what a mess. Good news, no leakage into the brakes. Brakes need replacing though. Pricing things out and wonder if the cost for never adjust is worth it. Thoughts? Also, are the bearings that come with the drum packages any good?

I did the the Never-Adjust brake upgrade. All in all I am glad I did. If you are staying with drum brakes, they are then at top efficiency all the time.
Dexter Self Adjusting Brakes (long W/pics and details)

A few tips.

I found by doing a brake wire upgrade at the same time (since you have all the coils open) was a major upgrade. The combo of being at top adjustment efficiency and lower voltage loss to the brake coils was a very good upgrade. Independent Brake Wire Feed Upgrade

If your old brake drums have more than 0.015" TIR (Total indicator runout) you will have a problem with self adjusting brakes in enough time. I had one drum what was out by 0.020" TIR and on manual adjust brakes you never know you had an issue. The brake just never worked totally efficient, ever. On the self adjust, if the out of round is bad enough it does an adjustment into the out of round area and then is locked on too tight all the time. A problem.

If your old drums run true, then no issues. If you are buying new Dexter drums, their spec is to run within 0.015 TIR and they will stand behind it if it is out and replace it.

As to bearings in a new drum, sometimes when you buy a new drum it will come with new outer races installed but no bearing cone. The issue with that is, the bearing even if new is not a match to the new race in the drum. It is discouraged to mix races and bearings that are not from a match set. However in this and age of sloppy tolerances, I have no idea if the cheap kits you buy are really a match set. They make different precision grades of tapered roller bearings. The high precision I know are true ground as a matched set. The low ends one, well I do not know.

Hope this helps

John