Video Transcript for Measuring To Choose The Right Trailer Axle

In order to find the correct replacement axle for your trailer there's a few things you need to do. The first one is we need to determine the capacity. The first place I always check for the axle capacity is on the axle tag, which is actually located on the axle. Now, most of these are in the center and they could be a white sticker or they could be a metal plate. Now, not all of them list the axle capacity, but the vast majority do, that's why I look here first. Granted, this is a new axle here, so the tag is in fairly good condition, but we can see on here GAWR, gross axle weight rating, 3,500 pounds, so I know this is a 3,500 pound axle.

So if you do have an axle tag and there isn't a capacity listed on there there may be a serial number, an axle number. And in which case, you could actually reach out to the actual manufacturer with this information and they should be able to give you the capacity. Some of the more common axle manufacturers on the market are Dexter and Lippert. So if you don't have an axle tag, that's okay. There is still other options to determine the capacity.

One would be to take a fabric tape measure and record the circumference of your axle tube. Now, once we have the circumference we can use the appropriate formula to get the diameter. And then using the diameter there's sort of a general axle guideline to determine capacity based on that diameter. So, for example, a 3,500 pound axle is gonna have a 2 3/8 inch diameter beam. Now, a 3 inch diameter beam would represent anywhere from a 5,200 pound to a 7,000 pound axle.

And there's also some larger ones as well as some smaller ones. So if we don't have that axle tag there we could just measure the diameter here of our axle tube. And another way is to actually look at the brake mounting flange bolts. Now, this is just gonna give you a rough ballpark. The 3,500 pound assemblies, they usually use this 4 bolt pattern where it's the larger 5200 to 7,000 pounds, use that 5 bolt pattern.

So that's more of a general guideline. That's certainly not all you wanna do, but it will help you reaffirm when you're measuring. So once we get to capacity there's two more things that we need to gather. The next one is going to be the hub face length. So the hub face length is gonna take our brake hubs into consideration. We're gonna be measuring from the part of the brake hub where our wheel mounts from one side to the other. So we'll go ahead and do that now. Now, once we have our hub face length, we need to determine our spring center length. So the spring center length is gonna be from the center of the leaf spring perch from one side to the other. So once we have all this information we can then use that to select the correct replacement axle for our trailer. We have a ton of different options to choose from based on a few different factors. Number one is the length of our axle, both the hub face and the spring center. There's gonna be several different options for each of these. There's also gonna be different axle capacities based on how heavy you need your trailer axle to be and how heavy your trailer is. Now, we always recommend replacing what's on your trailer with the exact same one that came off. So, for example, if your old axle had an 89 inch hub face that's what we'd recommend replacing it with. And the same goes for the weight capacity, although you can upgrade. No matter what capacity you need we should still have an option for you. Now, in addition to the capacity, we're also gonna have axles with a built-in drop if you need that, or just a straight axle. And we also have some different kits that are gonna come with some different components. We can either purchase the axle, just the spindle only axle. We could get this with an idler hub, or we could get this with an electric brake drum and some electric brakes, depending on what capacity you need..