Dexter E-Z Lube Axles Trailer Idler Hub Assembly Review and Installation
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Review and How to Install the Dexter E-Z Lube Axles Trailer Idler Hub Assembly
Connor: Hey guys, how's it going Connor here today at etrailer.com. We're going to be taking a look at the Dexter idler hubs for our 5,200 pound axles in particular. Now, if you're wondering what type of idler hubs you need, the easiest way to do this is it's going to be to crawl under the trailer and look on the center line of the actual beam, on here is going to have a sticker with the manufacturer serial number and usually the weight capacity as well. The weight capacity is usually going to be the best guide to help us selecting our idler hub. However, we can always contact the manufacturer with the serial number to get specific such as bearing information in grease seals. So if you're wondering why you would be installing idler hubs on such a large 5,200 pound axle, it's because chances are you're either looking to swap from hydraulic drum brakes or electric drum brakes to hydraulic disc brakes, which you can see we have the disc brake mounting flange here.Keep in mind the rest of the components for a disc breaking assembly are going to be sold separately here through etrailer.
So swapping the disc brakes is actually going to be a huge improvement, especially for our larger trailers here. Number one, it's going to be a lot easier to perform maintenance because we don't have to worry about taking the hub off, then messing with the breaking assemblies, which in my opinion is a little bit more difficult than it would be to just deal with the calipers which are used on most cars today. Now, in addition to easy maintenance, our disc brakes are going to definitely provide a greater stopping power for our trailer. They're also going to be more responsive as well. So our Dexter idler hubs here as we have on this trailer today, are going to come with a grease seal with an inner diameter of 2.125 inches.However, we need to check the outer diameter of our spindle to make sure that matches, because it's 5,200 pound axle could be fitted with either that grease seal or the larger one, which measures 2.250 inches.
After we measure our spindle here, where the grease seal sits, or we called the manufacturer to determine that we do in fact, need the other grease seal, you can easily attain this here at etrailer. Our a Dexter idler hubs here are going to come with both our inner and outer bearing as well as our grease seal and the races. It's also going to come with our lug nuts here. The only other thing we're really going to need is we're going to need grease so we can grease the bearings and install them on the spindle, then lube everything up properly. We also have our grease cap here, which has a plug for the Zurich fittings on our axle.Keep in mind, this kit is available with the standard grease kit that doesn't have the Zurich fitting port.
Now that we've gone over some of the benefits and features, let's jump right in and show you how easy this is to install yourself. To start installation today, we need to get our trailer in the air. Now we're going to be using our landing gear legs, but if we want, we can also play some jack stands under the frame to hold it in there, so it's properly supported. But once the wheels are off the ground here, we can go ahead and begin tho remove the tires using a 19 millimeter socket. I do recommend removing both wheels on one side.I don't recommend doing all four at once, just so we have that extra security there.
So now we need to go ahead and remove the grease cap, which we could do with just a flathead screwdriver. We're just going to get it in here, pry it between the hub and the lift on our grease seal. We need to work our way around. Just keep working your way around. You can take it off just like that. So once we have the grease seal off, there's going to be a castle up behind the screen. We have to remove in order to allow us to pull our hub. So we're just going to take a paper towel here and get rid of some of that extra grease.There's actually going to be a cotter pin here, which we need to remove first. So we're just going to take a set of needle-nose pliers, try and get the cotter pin out of the way. So basically, you're going to bend the two tabs back and we're going to try to straighten it out as much as we can. Once we get it straight enough, we should be able to pull it out the other side, just like that. And then come back with our channel lock pliers here, try to get a grip on the nut.Shouldn't be on there very tight at all, so it should just be able to throw it off by hand. And behind our castle nut, we should have a washer which we see there. It Should come out if we just take the hub off as well. Here we go. You can go ahead and set this aside. So now that we have the hub off, we can even go ahead and remove our braking assembly. We're first kind of want to cut our wires here for the electric brakes, just like that. Now we can take a 15 millimeter socket and remove the five bolts that are holding our braking assembly to the axle.And so those bolts are out should be able to remove our breaking assemble. And a couple more wires here at the back we need to take out as well. So now that we have our hub and drum off, we can go ahead and repeat this process on the other side of the trailer. So before we re-install a new idler hub, what we want to do is, we want to make sure that there isn't any existing grease on either of our spindles here. So we're just going to take a rag. We're going to try to get as much of that off of it as we can.Now, before we begin to lube our bearings and insert them into the idler hub here, the races are actually already installed for us. So we don't have to worry about that. But I do need to make a note about the grease seal. As you see here, this is going to be the grease seal that came with our idler hub. However, this is actually not correct. The inner diameter does not match the outer diameter of our spindle, where the grease seal is going to ride. So actually going to need to obtain this other grease seal here. So just to show you what we we're talking about earlier, we have our two grease seals here, which are going to have the same outer diameter. However, the inner diameter is going to be different. So we do just want to take a measurement on our spindle for the grease seal rights.It's going to be about 2.250, which is going to match up with these grease seal here, which is why we needed this one instead of the one that came with our kit. Now that we've verified that we have the correct grease seals, we can go ahead and begin to pack our bearings and insert them into the idler hub here. Now we're going to be using this grease here, which can be attained through etrailer, but there is no grease that comes with the kit. So there's two methods to this. We could use a bearing packer or the easiest method is just to pack them by hand. Essentially, we just want to get the grease in between all the groups here. So we needed to do this for both the inner and the outer bearing. Or also going to lube up the spindle before we insert our hub on.Now that we have one of our bearings properly lubed up, go ahead and set it into the race there. We can grab our other bearing and do the same thing. Just a little tip here, we're just going to take a glob here and tick one side of the bear. And we're just going to press it in there like so, work our way around. We should start to see it come around up top. So now that we have our inner bearing in place, we can go ahead and install our grease seal. Before we do this, I'm just going to get a thin coating of grease on both the outer and inner diameter of our grease seal here. You don't need to really glob it per se, and we can set it in like so. In order to get it in place evenly, we're going to take a block of wood two by four here. We're just going to gently sort of hammer it in.We're going to do that until it's flush with a flange on the back of our idler hub. Just like that. And we're just going to go ahead and flip the idler hub over, once we have a grease seal in place. We can install our outer bearing. Now it's ready to be put back on the trailer. So before we put our hubs back on, we want to go ahead at this time, install our brake mounting flange. We want to make sure that we have our two caliper mounting bracket bolts are going to be facing rear of the trailer. It's never going to reuse the nuts that came off our existing breaking assembly. Just get these hand site. We can go ahead and zip these down. Now we're going to take our 15 millimeter socket here and torque our bolts down to about 40 to 50 foot pounds.Now that we have our caliper mounting bracket installed, go ahead and take some grease here, just lube our spindle up nice and good. So now we can go ahead and take our idler hub here, set it on the spindle, making sure our outer bearing doesn't pop out on us. It's going to push it down, just like so. Push our outer bearing into place. So we're going to take our washer here, slide it over the spindle. Now we can take our castle nut thread that back on. Once we get this hand tight here, we need to go ahead and seal our grease seal in the rear here. Now in order to see our grease seal here, we have two different tools we can use. We're going to be using a 1.5 inch socket. Basically what we're going to do is, we're going to tighten it down, sit the grease seal, come back off.We're just going to do this a couple of times. Get the grease seal to sit evenly in place. Now, if you don't have a 1.5 inch socket handy, we can use a crescent wrench or a set of a vice grips for this as well. It should be good. So now what we're going to do is, I'm going to get down to our final torque, which is simply just hand tight until we align the hole for our cotter pin. You can tell how much you're depended on. Connor: Here, we can take our cotter pin- crosstalk 00:10:32 It had to- crosstalk 00:10:33Connor: .insert that into the hole there. May need to take a hammer just to tap it down a little bit. Speaker 3: Put the bear and- crosstalk 00:10:44Connor: And we'll take the other end of our cotter pin, just bend it back. Speaker 3: We'll just use it like a bare wall, that bare neck, that part- crosstalk 00:10:55Connor: Just like that. Speaker 3: .build up in- crosstalk 00:10:56Connor: So now that we have our castle nut secure, we've locked it in place with our cotter pin. We can go ahead and fill the hubs here. We're going to be using some red grease, which is going to look a little bit different than the green base that we put in earlier. However, as long as you check the compatibility, there shouldn't be an issue. Basically, what we're looking for is the grease to start to ooze out of the outer bearing on the side there. Keep in mind, we do want to rotate the hub while we're greasing it. Now finally, we can go ahead and set our grease cap in position, just going to be using a block of wood and a hammer to sit it fully. I want to make sure that we hit it in enough on each side. So it doesn't go in more than one on the other and damage it. Just going to be hitting it until it's flush with the flange on our idler hub here.So it looks like we're good just there. So now that we have the grease cap in place, we can go ahead and repeat this same process on our remaining spindles. So now that we have all of our idler hubs installed, we can go ahead and begin to reassemble the rest of our components for our brakes, which is going to be our rotor, our disparate calipers, and then our brake lines, if applicable. And then that's going to do it for the installation of our Dexter idler hubs here on our 5,200 pound axles..
Info for this part was:
Installed by:
Patrick B
Installed by:
Conner L
Video Edited:
Jacob T
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