Oil bath lubricated bearings?

[ragfly]

Anyone have any experience with them? I trailer my boat alot and am tired of having to rebuild the old style every year. I was hoping the oil bearing ones would last longer. I like the concept and feel they will lubricate the bearings better, but before I take the $130 plunge I would like to know if others have any feed back on them.

[Roger]

Something's wrong if you have to rebuild the old style every year.

[zacs]

i would have to agree with roger.

[striperman36]

I also am curious about the liquid ones. I do regrease my bearing every spring and it's one of the low lifes of the season.
But as noted you have to replace the hub and the bearing buddies to actually use the new system
Are tractor trailers really lubed this way?

Bill

[ProfessorM]

Sounds good but I would think after a while they would make one big oily mess after seals wear out.. If water would get into the oil that would not be good. The grease is the way to go, just need to repack every year. I don't find it a big deal. A 1 hour job and a hell of a lot cheaper. IMO.. P.

[Roger]

I had a trailer for 8 years with bearing buddies that I never repacked the bearings. I just made sure there was enough grease, but not too much. I also checked the hubs after every tow. They never got very warm.

Now I have superlube hubs which work like a bearing repacker - pushing the old grease out when new grease is pumped in.

Personally, I'd rather carry a $40 hub/bearing assembly and maybe never use it than do the annual messy preventative maintenance on the bearings. Besides, I usually have to spend time fixing broken items to worry about things that ain't broke.

["uffah!!"]

Yes, tractor-trailers are lubricated by Oil Bath Bearings. They
use
the oil bath system because they don't heat-up and cause bearing failure. If you look at it, like, a tractor-trailer traveling up and down the highway at 65mph with a gross weight of lets say 80,000lbs, for approx.10hrs.at a time, those bearings can get pretty hot.

[ragfly]

maybe I should re-phrase the rebuild my bearings, I should have said remove them, clean them and repack them. I usually don't have to replace the bearings. I could probably go two years, but like I said I trailer alot and sometimes it's 4 or 5 hour drives. I do have buddy bearings on them, by the way buddy bearings only work on the front bearings not the rear, I learned that the hard way many years ago. I was just wondering how these bearings were.

[fishaholic18]

I repacked mine and changed seals every year. If you haven't, chances are..They are corroded.

[macojoe]

I had my old trailer 7 years, bought it cleaned the bearing's, and did every spring, and never replaced them ever!!

But the new trailer has the super lube like Rogers and I have never worried about it, but it is only 2 years old.

[Team Rock On]

I've had the oil bath bearings on my trailer for about 4 years. Over 15,000 miles on them too. Never done a thing but look in the "window" to see if there was still oil in there.