Trailer issues.

[FSH 210 Sport]

My experience with bearing buddies.

I‘ve had bearing buddies on a couple of trailers. It takes a while for the BB’s to fully fill the hub as the air works its way out. You just have to keep topping them off until the whole hub cavity gets filled. On my boat trailer, they took a lot of refills at first and now they need a little every once in a while as the last bit of air is working it’s way out. It is best to not fully compress the diaphragm spring, that spring is there to hold a certain amount pressure on the grease and allow for expansion and contraction of the grease due to temperature changes.

The style I had before the ones on the boat trailer had small holes to release excess grease pressure if they were overfilled to keep from pushing the grease past the inner seal where it could contaminate the brakes, made a nice mess if you over filled them. I have not noticed these relief holes on the BB’s on my boat trailer..makes sense actually. However, if you over fill them and go for a decent tow that expanding grease has to go somewhere, and the weakest place is the inner seal.

Checking them is just part of normal maintenance. They’re an excellent design to keep water from getting sucked passed the seals when a warm wheel hub gets submerged into cooler water.

 

[Ronnie]

I have a 2010 MFI trailer (metal fabricators inc.) that Yamaha used to use before the factory burned down and went out of business. Sounds like the shorelander Trailers that replaced the MFI trailers were designed the same way, on the cheap. My stock trailer was ok with that design basis in mind but I’ve since upgraded the hell out of it. I have to trailer whenever I want to get on the water so I wanted to make trailering as easy as possible. Also, the reality is that if my trailer fails I’m stuck. I either can’t go boating or can’t return from it.

that said, I’ve upgraded the lights, added self retracting stern straps, replaced the Stock winch and Jack with Fulton F2 models, replaced the safety cables with chains that have spring loaded S hooks, replaced the bow stop roller with a ramp n clamp and added trailer guides. Recently upgraded my tires and rims. I almost forgot about the rear view camera and that I painted it.

her me is a link to a short video I made before I upgraded the rims and tires.

https://jetboaters.net/threads/trailer-and-tow-vehicle-upgrades.23383/