Today we are going to show you part number 1980A it is a Genuine Bearing Buddy trailer wheel bearing protector. The part number actually stands for 1.98 inches. It is shown here because it is the most popular bearing cover size for all 3,500 pound axles and most 2,000 pound axles and hubs that are out there. What these parts do is replace the regular dust cap that is on your hub. Basically, that gets taken off and everything stays the same on the inside. What you do is pack a little bit of grease in these, just a little bit in here. Then what happens is this gets installed and it does get hammered into place, use a wooden block between this and the hammer. And you drive it in flat. As you can see here there is a little Zerk fitting here. Once you have the bearing protector installed you fill it up with grease. And basically you just want to fill it up just enough until the spring starts moving out, because what has happened is you have air trapped in there and you want to give it a chance to work its way out.
If there is air trapped inside there or grease it will actually work its way around the spring valve, down behind this blue ring here. As you can see, when it is completely full, the spring will push it out. Once it goes flat it will let you know that it is time to add a little more grease in there. Usually though, starting off you just want to move it 1/8 of an inch, let it sink back down, and add more grease to work out the air. Once you have it installed it comes with the bearing cover that covers up the whole entire cap here. Any grease that comes through the valve gets trapped inside here so it will not get spread all over your wheels as you are going down the road. The bearing buddies do come in an variety of different sizes here. Again we are showing you part number 1980A and this is the only one that they make with the lube indicator. Everything else stays the same, the operation stays the same for all of these. The only thing that changes is the size of the hub that you are working with.
As you can see here we have 3 different sizes, and again it goes by model number 19.38, 23.28 and 20.47. Again, those are all different sizes, basically put a point behind the first number and that tells you the exact size hub you are working with in decimals. A couple of nice details about this is that obviously the point of these are to keep the water and dirt out of the hubs and bearings. Also, the components inside are all stainless steel and the automatic pressure control prevents the hub seal from leakage. Basically, if the grease gets hot or the air inside gets hot the spring will come out and allow the extra gas to vent out. There you have it for the Genuine Bearing Buddy part number 1980A.
