Trailer Idler Hub Assembly for 2,000-lb Axles - 4 on 4 - Galvanized

Video Transcript for Trailer Idler Hub Assembly Review

Speaker 1: Today we're going to be taking a look at the etrailer idler hub assemblies for 2,000 pound axles. Now to determine what size bearing you're going to need, we're going to remove the tire here. We're going to take you through the whole installation process, so you know how to get the old stuff off, and how to get your new stuff on.First thing we need to do is get our tire out of the way here. Now we can take the cap off of the end. Now, your cap can look a little bit different. This is not an easy lube axle, so it has a solid cap on it.

An easy lube will have a black plug there on the end so you can get to that greaser. Regardless of what type it is, we're going to use a soft hammer here, just tap it around, eventually it's going to come off.Now depending on your application, the next thing we'll need to do is remove, in this application we've got a cotter pin, or you might have a keeper that just slides over the nut. In either case, let's get that removed. So if you have a cotter pin, you just straighten it out, and then pull on your rounded side there. At that point, you can take off the nut.

Now traditionally, there's going to be a flat washer. You can see this one doesn't have it, but traditionally there'd be a flat washer that sits behind there. If you have that, you want to hang on to that and your nut. Just going to pull it on off there. That's going to take out our inner seal, our inner bearing, and our outer bearing along with the hub all at the same time.Now we'll just clean that spindle up really well, get off all the old grease, then we can start to inspect it.

Now this is what your spindle should look like once you get it cleaned up. What you're looking for is a nice smooth surface. Our outer bearing is going to ride here. Our inner bearing is going to ride here. You want to make sure there's no rust, you want to make sure there's no pitting or any areas of concern that might cause damage to those bearings.And then the larger area here is going to be your grease seal.

We also want to make sure that that's really nice and clean. We want to make sure that we don't have any pitting, that we don't have any gaps because anything like that will just allow your grease to escape out of the back. Now if you have had bearing failure on your axle, you're typically going to see some cracking here on the spindle, or you're going to see discoloration where it's turned to a purple or kind of a green. It almost looks like it's been hardened. If that's the case, you need an axle replacement. There's no sense in putting good parts on a bad axle. It's just going to wear out very rapidly. So if it looks like this, you're good to move ahead. If it doesn't look like this, you're going to need an axle replacement.Now when determining which of the two bearing kits that you're going to need, it's either going to be the kit that ends in 1K or the kit that ends in 2K. We need to determine the diameter of our spindle. Now this is either going to be one inch or one inch and 1/16. So it's very hard to determine with just a tape measure. We can't really measure the end here because those threads are smaller. That's going to be about an inch if this is an inch and 16ths. So your best bet, again, that dial caliper will bring it down, set it right on that bearing surface, 1.06. That indicates that we need the 649. If that was one flat, 1.00, we'd need the 643 bearing kit.Next issue's going to be whether it's an easy lube or a standard. This is a standard. You can see the end of the spindle's flush with the no grease inaudible 00:04:05 sticking out of it. And if you do have a grease inaudible 00:04:07 sticking out, you want to go with the easy lube style.Now there are a couple other choices that you'll have with these hubs designed for the 2,000 pound axles. One of those things are going to be the bolt pattern. Basically, you're either going to have four lugs or you're going to have five. With the four lug pattern, they're going to call this a four on four. And you can verify that. Basically you just want to measure it from the center of one stud to the center of the opposite stud. You can see that's giving us right at four inches. Once we get into the five bolt pattern, you can see this is going to be called a five on 4 1/2. So you're going to have five wheel studs that stick out. And we'll measure from the outside of one to the center of the opposing one.It's a little bit different than measuring one that's symmetrical, but you'll see that's going to give us the 4 1/2. So that'll help you to confirm that you've got the five on 4 1/2 inch bolt pattern. Now in these hubs with the five on 4 1/2, they come in two sizes. One's going to be about 5 1/4 inches in diameter. The other one's going to be 6 1/4 inches in diameter. So you want to measure from this outside edge to this outside edge to make sure you're getting the right one. Now the smaller one here that's 5 1/4, this is going to work for eight inch all the way up to your 15 inch tires.This one's what they call the large flange. This one's designed more for the 13 to 15 inch tires. And the last thing you're going to decide is what finish you want. The black ones that we have here, these are just going to be a standard paint finish. So what you're typically going to see on your utility trailers, things of that nature. The galvanized hub, which is the one that's silver here, has a galvanized coating on it. It's designed to really resist corrosion much better than just plain steel. These you're going to see a lot of times in a marine application, so your jet ski, wave runner, Jon boat kind of applications.Now in each kit, you're going to have everything that you need with the exception of the washer and the nut, and of course the keeper that comes with the nut. That's all supplied with the axle. In the hub kit, you're going to have the appropriate bearings. We've showed you how to measure that. Both bearings are going to be the same in your kit. The inner and outer, there's not really a difference between. The biggest difference is this inside diameter liked we talked how to measure the spindle.You're going to have your seal. These are all going to be the same, and this is going to fit in the backside of the hub. We'll show you how to install that. And you're going to have new lug nuts that are designed to fit the new studs. Now if you have a four on four, of course you're going to get four lug nuts. If you have the five on 4 1/2, it will come with five. And then you're going to have one of the two caps here. So we said if you have an easy lube style, that's what your cap's going to look like. It's going to allow you to remove that cap and get to the grease circuit inside, where this is going to be for the standard spindle, kind of like what we have here. This is just going to go on and cover it.Now for the grease that's going to go in your hub, you need to choose one that's going to be right for your application. For a marine style application, you want to use a marine grease. This is going to have all the lubricants we need to make sure our bearings stay in good shape. It also is going to have corrosion inhibitors. That way we're not going to have to worry about excess corrosion. For utility trailers, like the one we're working on here today, a good standard red grease or a high speed high load grease is what you're looking for. This is the ultra lube. It's available on our website, but any high temp high load grease is going to work out well for you.Now we're going to be packing all of the bearings at once. We're going to have grease all over our hands. You can use a bearing factor if you've already got one or if you want to purchase one, it could be a little bit cleaner through this process. We've got several available on our website, but the general principle of what we're going to do here. Gonna take a good amount of grease, want to get it formed into your hand pretty well, and we're going to be shoving that in between the inner portion of the bearing. You can see this little bit of a wide gap right here. We're going to shove it through there until it comes out of the top. So just use that to capture a little bit, push it in, just continue with that until it comes out of the top.We look right there on that top edge, you can see where some of it started to come up through. We want to do that all the way around on all four of our bearings. Now we're ready to get our inner bearing and seal installed. So we're going to do that from the back side of the hub. This would be the face of it. We're going to take one of our pre-greased bearings, going to drop it down in. Now there's a taper to it. We want that taper, the narrower part to be in. Going to drop it in, get it seated properly. At this point, we're going to get our seal installed. So we're going to place that on the back side of the hub, place that down and on. Use our hammer to tap it into place.The idea here is you want the seal to sit flush with the back of the hub, just like that. You see it's nice and flush all the way around. Now if you decide you don't want to purchase the seal driver tool, a lot of times you'll see a guy use a block of wood similar to this. Place that down on, and then drive it like that. Now we're going to load the hub full of grease. We want plenty in there, just don't want there to be any space between the spindle and the hub so you don't have to worry about any moisture or corrosion, things like that. inaudible 00:09:54 kind of what we're left with. You can see we've got it. Now we'll slide our hub right onto the spindle. You want to make sure it seats all the way in, and our seal goes up on that wire area.Time for us to place our outer bearing in. Now I'm going to take my washer and place it back on. You remember when we disassembled, we didn't have one of these. We want to be sure that we do. That part number is SW1000. Got that in place. Now we can thread on our nut. And if you had any damage to yours, you can replace that. Tighten that down, it's almost going to lock your hub. Back that off just a touch. Want that to be nice and free spinning, but we don't want any end play, which means we don't want to be able to move this in or out. End play would look like that.Now we'll place our cotter pin through the end of the hub there. And then we can fold each side of that pin over. Now we replaced our cotter pins. Ours we're getting pretty old, and again, those are available on our website. Part number is 165649. No end play, everything's working nice and smooth. Now we'll place our cap on there squarely. We'll just start tapping around the edge to get it in place. Put tire back on, and we'll secure that with our new lug nuts. Now we just want to head over to our other side. Going to do the same thing there, and when we get the trailer down on the ground, be sure to torque your lug nuts down to the appropriate specification. And that'll complete our look at the etrailer idler hub assemblies for 2,000 pound axles.