Joint Grease in the Wheel Bearing Hub

I'd be hesitant to try that based of my experience with bonehead lube guys doing that to final drives on tracked equipment. All the bearings burn up on every one of them I've seen it done to. Not saying you're wrong, just my personal experience.

 

I converted my hubs on my wagon to hub grease. Less seal leakage failure that way. Just repack them when you do a brake job.

 

I meant to get it to the shop. Not to keep running it that way. For that reason.

 

This is not a good idea at all. Yeah if you keep up on packing them on a scheduled time you may be OK and get lucky and never have a failure. This is the lazy mans way for those that cannot take the time to properly install a quality wheel seal so that is will not leak. Why do you suppose axle manufacturers quit using grease pack bearings? People don't maintain them properly and wheels come off when bearings fail.

 

Someone has converted this hub to a grease application possibly because something could be wrong with the spindle? Putting oil in the hub will possibly just leak out of the seal. Bearings once packed with grease do not have to be removed to repack, you should take a grease gun and fill the cap careful to not put to much or the cap will be pushed out . The grease will work its way in. Nothing wrong with grease hubs just need to check and maintain regularly.

 

^^^Not correct^^^
The culture in North America has favored oil hubs while the rest off the world prefers grease.
You can now buy traileraxles with sealed grease hubs(you cannot open then or adjust them) that have a 1 000 000km or 620 000miles warranty.(those are disk brake )

 

They quit using greased bearings because the so called non lazy were too stupid to maintain their equipment properly.

Wheel seals are going to eventually leak. Just the nature of the beast. That thing will fail with a critical load on and three coops to cross.

Now go find you a trailer with auto inflation installed and tell me how much oil you put in them.

 

Explain why it isn't a good idea? Got nothing to do about being lazy. It got everything to do about durability. And for future info, they DID NOT quit packing wheel bearings with grease or using them. Most manufacturers have actually gone back to grease pack wheel hubs.

 

I favor manufacturer recommended wheel end maintenance procedures no matter the country or axle type. Packing oil bath bearings with chassis or wheel bearing grease is wrong and causes dangerous wheel off accidents. Your talking about a wheel end that contains free flowing synthetic grease and is completely different from what the OP has on his hands.

 

You choose to pack your trailer wheel bearings and that's fine on your own equipment for which you maintain. A grease pack wheel end is no more durable than oil bath and they both require routine preventative maintenance and inspection. Grease packed bearings actually have a shorter service life than oil bath. Are you saying that the hub the OP has in question is OK to run until the brakes are due to be changed? Not for me, not even close.......