Posted 2006-10-01 6:47 PM (#49481) Subject: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Expert
Posts: 2953 Location: North Carolina
If your trailer has Dexter Eze-lube axles, Here's a lube tip: Don't!!
I just took off a wheel on a horse trailer that was new to me. I noticed a bit of grease/oil staining on the wheel. So ... I went ahead and removed the brake drum. What a mess !! the drum was full of grease. The brake shoes were completely saturated and useless. I'll have to buy a new set. The rear seal was blown out of the hub and onto the axle!
The previous owner must have periodically used a grease gun to pump grease through the lube fitting hidden under the rubber plug. That grease had to go somewhere. It filled the drum!!
It is a far better practice to hand pack the bearings after cleaning them.
Posted 2006-10-02 8:19 AM (#49491 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Extreme Veteran
Posts: 455 Location: Texas
I agree that it is much better to pack the bearings by hand when assembling the hub to the axle. That is a mess you got there. The seal must have gone bad, though, too. Those grease fittings are meant to grease from the inner bearing towards the outer bearing, and excess grease is supposed to come out the outside, not go back inside. Either way, it is a crappy deal. Good luck.
Posted 2006-10-02 9:33 AM (#49495 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Extreme Veteran
Posts: 544 Location: Claxton, Ga.
No doubt this looks like lack of maintenance. You can't just rely on the grease fittings. You have to pull the hub from time to time to clean, repack, and inspect. If this was done the bad inner seal would of been caught. I have cleaned a many a mess such as this. I would go through and replace all inner seals on every hub and of coarse repack the bearings. Hope you have a bearing packer it sure makes it easier than doing it by hand.
Posted 2006-10-02 10:47 AM (#49496 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Extreme Veteran
Posts: 534 Location: Zionsville, Indiana
Almost every brand of trailer we sell has EZ Lube axles. We tell our customers about them, and tell them that the EZ Lube is job security for us since we get to clean up so many messes and sell so many new brake assemblies. Our advice to our customers and to anyone else is to hand pack the bearings at least once per year, and leave the EZ lube zerk alone.
Posted 2006-10-02 11:17 AM (#49499 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Veteran
Posts: 167 Location: Monroe, WA
Eeeewwwww.....nasty! Guess now I don't think those newfangled axles are quite as nifty as they sound!It does pay to pull the drums every so often. When we were getting the (newly acquired) RV ready to haul down for camping at the year end horse show, I noticed a brake wire torn off one of the backing plate. Got to pull the drum to do the repair, and upon finding the bearings just a tad drier than is my personal preference, I went ahead and pulled all four wheels. Previous owner had said this rig was serviced by the dealer when they bought it - and they'd only pulled it a couple times.Wheels on side #1 were just not as well packed as I like, so I did a repack and cleaned the shoes and drums. Went around to the other side, and WOWEEE!!! seals on BOTH hubs were just barely tapped on there - like somebody had them set out to do and then slapped them on the trailer without finishing up. Needless to say I did a complete cleaning and inspection of those bearings, but thankfully all was sound - just needed to be put together properly.
You just can't trust anybody to do good work these days (old woman grumbling...)
Posted 2006-10-02 7:26 PM (#49520 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Expert
Posts: 2689
Different Tip.
Count the number of grease gun strokes it takes to see fresh grease come out.
If one takes more than 3 (maybe 4) strokes more than the others, then IT's rear seal is blown and THAT is the one you need to pull apart. If the other 3 hubs show lot of variation, pull those too.
BTW, Brake-Kleene DOES disolve the grease right out of Dexter shoes.
Wipe them as clean as you can with kitchen paper, then basically HOSE them with Brake-Kleen, it works WELL if you do it two or three times.
Posted 2006-10-03 11:06 AM (#49553 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Extreme Veteran
Posts: 534 Location: Zionsville, Indiana
Reg - Our experience has been that once the shoe material is soaked with grease, it then quickly deteriorates and chunks off. Add the cost of shoes to the time (at $60.00 per hour) it takes to clean the assembly, and it actually makes a new assembly (backing plate) more economical. Also, most people are of the "if a little bit is good, more is better" mindset, and they just keep pumping in the grease. How many pumps do you think it takes to solidly fill in a brake assembly? Quite a few, I'll bet.
Posted 2006-10-03 8:19 PM (#49568 - in reply to #49553) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Expert
Posts: 2689
Originally written by Kay on 2006-10-03 11:06 AM
Reg - Our experience has been that once the shoe material is soaked with grease, it then quickly deteriorates and chunks off. Add the cost of shoes to the time (at $60.00 per hour) it takes to clean the assembly, and it actually makes a new assembly (backing plate) more economical. Also, most people are of the "if a little bit is good, more is better" mindset, and they just keep pumping in the grease. How many pumps do you think it takes to solidly fill in a brake assembly? Quite a few, I'll bet.
My experience on the 8K Dexter axles is "about 50" for a totally empty spindle, but of course it depends on the grease gun. Not that there is NO grease in a new bearing and hub, so when you load it for the first time it could be almost any amount.
My point was that at the annual greasing an owner might find 3 of their 4 hubs take say 7 to 9 strokes before they see clean grease coming through. If the other one takes 12 or more strokes its a fair bet that it is coming out the rear seal. If their mileage, usage, temperature, whatever is such that they all take 17 to 20 thats probably OK, the values don't matter as much as the highest "odd one out".
Personally, I believe in the E-Z lube axles. I think there is a lot of confusion between cause and effect when people a) have used the zerk fitting and b) have found a lot of grease on their brake linings.
I think what usually happens is that the seal fails, either because it dried out or wasn't installed properly. THEN the owner adds grease, THEN the brakes get bad, THEN the hub gets pulled, THEN a conclusion is made that just might be wrong.
I've NEVER seen a seal that was "blown out", i.e. turned inside out, by pressure and I really don't think you could get the pressure and FLOW required to do that from a handheld greasegun.
Posted 2006-10-03 8:38 PM (#49569 - in reply to #49568) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Expert
Posts: 2953 Location: North Carolina
Originally written by Reg on 2006-10-03 7:19 PM
I've NEVER seen a seal that was "blown out", i.e. turned inside out, by pressure and I really don't think you could get the pressure and FLOW required to do that from a handheld greasegun.
Reg ... If you look closely at the my attached picture named two seals... You'll see not one, but two seals blown out of the hub. Or, maybe they were never pressed in. Anyway, when I pulled the hub there were two seals left on the hub. I would think that a hand grease gun could put enough pressure on a seal to push it out of the hub. I watched the previous owner use the grease gun.
As a point of fact. Dexter's instructions are to rotate the wheel as the grease is being pumped. I haven't ever seen anybody do that. Consequently, two stationary bearings could provide enough back pressure to hydraulicly push a seal out a hub.
Posted 2006-10-03 10:30 PM (#49574 - in reply to #49569) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Expert
Posts: 2689
OK, two things;
1) On the heavier Dexter axles, 8k and I think 6K the seal is a two part thing, at least the replacement that my local bearing house carries is 2 parts.
2) Sure, you can get tremendous pressure with a hand held gun, but when the grease is happily escaping through the bearings that pressure just doesn't build up.
SOP
I put seals in with a socket, just choose the one that most closely matches the inside diameter of the recess that it is to go into and tap it in squarely, regular shade tree practice. "Tap" is probably the operative word, with any mechanical sense at all you KNOW when its bottomed.
Yes, I load them before I put the wheel on, not sure that I always rotate the drum as I squirt the grease in, but given that it only comes out of a small channel at the back, rotation probably helps.
I just can't visualise it properly right now, but I'm wondering if an unseated seal would already be outboard of the grease channel, sending the grease DIRECTLY to the wrongs side..... ? Hmmmm, maybe I'll look at my spare drum tomorrow, its getting late here.
zzzzz
Posted 2006-10-04 7:55 AM (#49583 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Expert
Posts: 1416 Location: sc
i would have to agree with reg, mostly. when the drum is in that bad of shape, user error is what caused that problem. i will say that i do not "trust" the ez lube though. the first time the bearing were serviced, no problem. and the last time i serviced my bearings, i used the ez lube and everything went smoothly......i thought. when i pulled them again, 2 of the 4 had "compromised" seals. some grease had made it out past the seal and made a mess, not to the pads though. im probably a notch or two above shadetree mech, and bearing packing is not rocket science. did i nick the seals? bad seals from the start? who knows? take it for what its worth.
Posted 2006-10-04 9:45 AM (#49588 - in reply to #49481) Subject: RE: Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
Regular
Posts: 87 Location: Lavaca, Alabama
ok, bear with me, I've got some questions. I bought a 2002 used trailer in February. I would guess based on its condition that the previous owner never had the bearing repacked. I pulled the trailer from February to July with no problems. In July, I had a guy cut out some things in the dressing area so I could get started on the lqs. I mentioned to him that I was taking it the next week to have the bearings repacked. He popped the caps off the wheels, showed me the zerk and said that they just needed greasing. He pumped about 3 pumps of grease into each one and told me that I could probably wait at least another year to have the bearings repacked. I then took my trailer 300 miles away on a trail ride and had problems stopping. I've had everything weighed on a CAT scale and I know fully loaded I am very close to the pin weight limit on the back axle of the truck. But I've never felt unsafe pulling this trailer with my truck and had never previously had a problem stopping. I had the trailer brakes maxed out and still could not effectively stop. I know, scary. So, you guys now have me thinking that maybe my brake pads got ruined with grease. Could that have happened because of the grease the guy pumped in? How do I investigate this myself - pull the tire off? and what else? Thanks.
Dexter Eze-lube axle tip
seals on BOTH hubs were just barely tapped on there - like somebody had them set out to do and then slapped them on the trailer without finishing up. Needless to say I did a complete cleaning and inspection of those bearings, but thankfully all was sound - just needed to be put together properly. 
