Dexter Nev-R-Adjust Electric Trailer Brake Assembly - 12" - Right Hand - 6,000 lbs

Video Transcript for Dexter Trailer Hub and Drum Assembly Installation

Speaker 1: Today on our trailer we're gonna be doing a complete electric brake system overhaul. We'll be using Dexter electric trailer brake assemblies, part number 23-459 for the right side and the same Dexter brakes on the left side with part number 23-458. For our bearing and hub assemblies we'll be using Dexter's trailer drum and hub assembly, part number 8-219-4UC3-EZ.The best part about these brake assemblies is that they come preassembled so you just have to bolt them on. Assembling drum brakes can be a long, tedious task so you don't have to worry about it. The shoes included have bonded material so it'll give you a little bit extra life and prevent any rivets from digging into you drum if your brakes got stuck or you've worn them too far.They're electronically actuated so when power and ground is received here at the magnet it energizes it, causing it to grab, and the rotational force causes them to go outward into your drum, allowing you to stop. Since the are electric their replacement's a lot easier because you don't have to do any bleeding, it's a lot cleaner because there's no fluid, and it's fully adjustable with your brake controller up in the front.

While there is a location here on the backing plate to manually adjust your brakes the lever here will automatically move the star gear, adjusting your brakes outward, taking up any play. You never need to worry about adjusting because every time you stop your vehicle it's gonna take up that slack.These brake assemblies will work with most standard hub and drum assemblies including Dexter and AL-KO. They have a five bolt mounting pattern and work with wheel sizes of 14 and a half inch, 15 inch, 16 inch, and 16 and a half inch and support an axle rating of 6,000 pounds. Now if you're looking on our website at similar Dexter brakes such as part number 23-464 they're gonna operate identical between the two, the only difference is that the 23-464 is slightly heavier duty as it's rated for 7,000 pounds instead of 6,000.This hub and drum assembly is gonna be a complete replacement kit for axles of 5,200 pounds to 7,000 pounds. It's gonna work with 12 inch brakes and has the bearing races pre installed.

It works with an eight on six and a half inch wheel stud pattern. The drum uses a two and an eighth inch grease seal, the inner bearing is number 25580 and the outer bearing is 14125A.The dust cover has a removable center seal which is great so when it's installed if you have quick lube set ups you can hook your grease gun up right in there, grease them up, and then just pop the rubber seal back in without having to fight getting this whole dust cap off because we all know those can be kind of a pain.Also in your kit you're gonna receive some brand new lug nuts that'll match up to the studs on your new hub. If you're comparing these to others on our website such as part number 8-219-13UC3 it's gonna be similar in just about every way, it'll come with the same hardware, however this drum's dust cap doesn't come with the easy lube compatible assembly for simple lubrication. Now that we've gone over some of the features let's show you how to get it installed.We'll start by removing our wheel, we'll take off the eight lug nuts using a 13-16th inch socket. Now this might vary from your trailer to this trailer so just make sure you're using the appropriate size.

We can then set our lug nuts aside and remove the wheel. Then you'll need to remove your bearing cover cap, you can just use a screwdriver to get in behind the cap and pry it outwards. Now we need to remove the cotter pin, you can use a pair of needle nose pliers to bend it down straight and then push it up. Once you've pushed it up you can stick one of the end of the needle nose in the loop at the top and pull it on out, then we can just set this aside.Now you can use a pair of channel locks to loosen up the nut and take it off. Now there is a lot of wheel bearing grease back in here so wearing a pair of rubber gloves or having plenty of rags handy will definitely make the job be a lot less messy and more organized.

You can just set the nut aside. Behind the nut you'll find your washer and your outer bearing. To get those off you'll want to pull out slightly and then just grab the bearing out of there. You'll set your bearing and your washer aside. Now the whole drum will come off and we can set this drum aside. As you can see here the shoe material has come loose so the brakes we're no longer good and all this crud around here indicates that our wheel bearing seal was leaking a little bit of grease.Now we've got access to our drum brakes. Before we take these off and replace those we're gonna clean off the spindle here, so just get all of that old grease off. Next we're gonna take off our entire brake assembly here, we're using some penetrating oil on the bolts to help those come loose easier. You want to break them loose by hand first. Our bolt here we'll use a 15 millimeter socket though yours may differ. Once you've got them all broke loose then you can take them all the way off. Then we'll take out our last bolt, we can just set those bolts aside.Your electric brakes are operated off of two wires, you need to cut both of those wires and then solder or crimp them onto the new brake assembly. We're just gonna cut those down, I like to cut them as close to the brake assembly as possible so that way our trailer's got as much length as possible to still work with. Then you can take this off and set it aside. Once you've got everything apart it is a good idea to take some brake clean and go over and clean up all of your spindle assembly here. Then make sure to wipe off the area where the seal rides here, that'll prevent any grease from leaking out of our new assembly.Now we can take our new brake assembly and slide it on to our old spindle here. Make sure that you have your wiring pulled to the side so it doesn't get bound up or caught on anything. Slide it right onto the studs and then use the hardware provided in the kit to secure it to your studs. These caps we can set aside because we won't be using them until a later step. Always start your hardware by hand to make sure you're not cross threading it. If one of your studs pushes out just push it back in, you may need to tap it on the backside with a hammer to reseat it. Then tighten them down using a 15 millimeter socket.Now we're ready to hook up our brakes so you'll take the wires that you previously cut, strip those back a little bit, then you can either solder or use butt connectors to reattach them to your new brake hardware. We're gonna go ahead and just use a heat shrink butt connector here, crimp it on to our old wiring, then we'll crimp one on our other old wiring piece and then we just need to crimp them onto the wires coming off of our brakes. You can hook up either wire on your brakes to either wire on your trailer because they're not directional as long as it's receiving ground and brake signal they'll stop. We'll now use our heat gun to shrink down our butt connectors so that way it'll seal our wires and protect it from any moisture or corrosion.After your wires are all heat shrunk down we'll use the tab in the back to secure it to our brake drum, take off any of that slack that we might have. It's always good to leave a little bit of slack in case you need to make a future wiring repair. It simply folds over and then pushes into the back button here on the back. Now you repeat the same process on the other side. If you have any other axles you're gonna be doing you'll do this as well.We're ready to prepare our drum for installation. The bearing races come pre installed inside the drum so all we need to do is pack our bearings and put the seal on. Before we pack our bearings we're gonna smear some grease on the cavity inside the drum here between the two races, get that kind of filled up. Now we'll pack our bearings, we're gonna be using a bearing packer to do this, you can pick up a bearing packer here at etrailer.com. Set your bearing packer with the small tapered end facing down and the larger end towards the top. Put the push tool on top of that and then just press down, working it back and forth. This is gonna squish the grease up inside of the bearing there so that way it's fully packed and we don't have to worry about any metal on metal contact occurring. Now we can take our larger bearing and put it in the backside of our drum here with the smaller tapered end facing inward, it should sit nicely inside the race.We're now ready to put our seal on, but since we've got our bearing packer out and everything we're gonna go ahead and prepare our outer bearing by packing it first. Now we can put our bearing seal in, you want to make sure that you put the end with the spring on the seal facing towards the bearing so it'll look like this. Then you'll drive it in either using a seal driver or if you don't have the particular seal driver you need lying around a block of wood always works well. Make sure your block of wood is longer than your seal so that way you can't push it in too far because it'll bottom out against the hub here. Just tap it into place making sure you're kind of driving it in evenly. Once it's all the way down you'll hear a noticeable difference in the sound of your hammer taps. Then it'll be flush with our hub and it's ready to go on.Before you put your drum assembly on go ahead and smear some wheel bearing grease all over your spindle here, particularly on the inside and outside bearing edge. You'll want to take the old washer that you removed from your old hub and clean it off because we will be reusing the washer, just get all that old grease off of there. Now we can slide our drum on, once the drum's slid on then slide in your outer bearing followed by your washer. Now you can take the nut provided in the kit and thread it on, go ahead and tighten the nut down.Now's a good time to put your tire back on so you can make the appropriate bearing adjustments. Use the new lug nuts provided in the kit to tighten down your wheel. Now that we've got our wheel on go ahead and turn the wheel while tightening down the nut. Once you get it all the way tight we're ready to adjust it, just make sure we get out any slack and that it's fully seated. Now we're gonna back it off and then re tighten it. We're not gonna go as tight as we did before, we just want to go tight enough to where there's just a hair of up and down play when we shake it, just a very small, small amount. If you've got too much just go a little bit tighter, and if you have no play at all you can just loosen it up just a hair.Once you've got it to where there's almost no play take your nut lock, slide it on overtop of your nut there, and we're ready to put our dust cap on. Insert the rubber piece inside your dust cap. I like to take a little bit of the wheel bearing grease around the edge and smear that around the outside just to make the dust cap go on a little bit easier. Then tap your dust cap on using a rubber mallet or a dead blow hammer. Just keep working it around until it seats fully.Now that everything's installed and our wheel bearings properly adjusted the only thing left is to double check our brakes and make sure they're adjusted properly. I like to give the wheel a spin and listen for any kind of brake drag. As you'll notice here the wheel is spinning and you can see that there's no resistance so we want to put just a touch of resistance from our brake shoes onto our drum there so we're gonna make some small adjustments using the openings in the back.You can make adjustments to your initial brake setting here through the two holes located on the back of the backing plate. Inside there will be a small star gear that you can adjust with either a flathead screwdriver or a special brake drum spoon tool. We've adjusted it now so you can hear that slight bit of brake drag that slows the wheel down so now we know that it's adjusted properly so when our breaks apply it's gonna apply immediately. Once you've got everything adjusted properly just take the small plastic caps provided in the kit and insert them in the two holes in the back of the backing plate.Now all that's left is to torque your lug nuts to the appropriate specification. Now you're ready to hook up to your trailer and hit the road. That completes the electric brake system overhaul on our trailer.