etrailer Easy Grease Spindles Trailer Axle Beam Installation
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How to Install the etrailer Easy Grease Spindles Trailer Axle Beam
Hey everybody, how's it going Today we're gonna be going over the line of trailer axle beams with easy grease spindles. This trailer axle beam here is gonna be an excellent option for your trailer, whether you're replacing a damaged or broken axle or you're upgrading to a higher capacity. So this axle thankfully is offered in a wide variety of different configurations. 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. So in regards to capacity, our axle here is offered in a capacity from 2000 pounds all the way up to 7,000 pounds.
So 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 can 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.
So this is actually a leaf spring axle not to be confused with a torsion axle. And as we know, most leaf spring axles are round, which all of the etrailer axles are. So therefore you're gonna make sure that you choose a round U-bolt kit. We'll get into that a little bit later. They're also made in the USA.
So you know you're getting a quality product. So one of the main standout features of this axle is the built-in zerk fittings into the end of the spindle. So if we remove this plug here from our grease tap, you're gonna see that zerk fitting. And what this is going to do is this is gonna allow for extremely easy maintenance. So most trailer manufacturers are gonna recommend that you re-grease the axles every year and make sure you pump a couple of grease into them before each trip. So as opposed to taking the cap off there and packing some more grease into your hubs, you're gonna be able to easily insert that grease there into the spindle, into the bearings there using the zerk fitting here on the end of the spindle. So just keeping a grease gun on your trailer or in your vehicle. It's gonna allow you to easily maintenance your hubs here, keeping and preserving the life of your axle. So now that we've gone over these axles a little bit, let's go ahead and show you how to pick out the correct one. Well, 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 axle 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 these 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 a general axle guidelines 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 three 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 knob and flange bolts. Now, this is just going to give you a rough ballpark. The 3,500 pound assemblies, they usually use this four bolt pattern where it's the larger 52 to 7,000 pounds use that five bolt pattern. So that's more of a general guideline. It'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. Now keep in mind, there are standards in regards to the capacity, the spring center length and the hub face length, but that doesn't always mean that there's gonna be an option for your particular measurements. We do carry some common ones here at etrailer, but we don't have every possible option. So if you have one of those oddball axles that don't match up to some of our selection, you will need to have a custom ordered axle. So now that we have the correct axle selected for our trailer here, we'll go ahead and show you how to get it installed. So the first step of our installation today, we do need to lift our trailer up in the air. So make sure you're parking on a nice flat level ground. Go ahead and take some jack stands there, place them in each of the four corners on the trailer and you just have to lift it enough to let the axles spin and our wheels hang freely. But once we do that, we can go ahead and start removing the wheels. Now, this is a tandem axle trailer here and we're gonna be replacing both axles, but I'm only gonna start with one. So go ahead and get the wheel off on one side. I'll jump over to the other side, remove that well as well. So next we need to remove our hub assembly. And the first step of that is to remove the grease cap. This could vary a little bit depending on if you have an easy hook fitting or you just have these standard hubs there. But regardless, there's a couple different ways to do this. Now we're gonna be replacing this. So I'm not really too worried about damaging it. I'm gonna first start with some vice grips here. I'm just gonna clamp around the outside of the grease cap and I'm just gonna rotate it and pull it off. Or we could take a flathead screwdriver there and get it between the two surfaces there on the hub and the grease seal, and just sort of hammer it away. So go ahead and use one of those two methods to remove the grease cap. So once we have the grease cap removed, I went ahead and wiped away some of the grease so we could see what we're doing a little bit. So there's gonna be a cotter pin here holding on our castle nut that we need to remove. So I'm gonna go ahead and bend the legs back and get them started here with a flathead and I'll switch over to some needle noses. Just go ahead and bend them as straight as you can. It does get messy here and it can be hard to see what you're doing But there's gonna be two little legs there on that cotter pins. So go ahead and bend them as straight as you can. And then we're just gonna pull up and out there on the top. That's our cotter pin there. Once we have that out, we can go ahead and turn that castle up, just like so. So granted not all hub assemblies are gonna have the same retention system. This is a pretty common design. There's some other ones that use some retainer clips, but the standard practice is pretty much the same there for a few small differences, but regardless we need to go ahead and get that castle nut off. So once we have our castle nut off we can go ahead and remove our hub assembly. Now yours may or may not slide right off. We're gonna go ahead and give it a tug here. And ours is actually coming off pretty easy. There is a washer there that's gonna come out so you can hold that and then it'll just slide off like so. So now we need to remove our braking assemblies. Now the process for this could vary a little bit depending on what size brakes you have, but usually there's gonna be a couple studs here running through the backside with some nuts we need to remove. This one here is a 3,500 pound axle for reference and it uses four studs there. The larger ones use more studs. So just go ahead and remove all the nuts and bolts securing these to the axle. And once we have our hardware removed, we'll go ahead and slide our braking assembly off. We're gonna go ahead and cut our wire here, holding it on. So there's the two wires going to the other side. I'm just gonna go ahead and cut them right here for now. Now I'm gonna go ahead and take some penetrating oil. I'm gonna spray down the nuts that go to our U-bolts and I'm gonna let that sit a while. And while I let that sit, I'm gonna go ahead and remove the other side. So we're gonna take the hub assembly off as well as the braking assembly from the other side of our axle. So now we can go ahead and remove the nuts holding our U-bolts to the leaf springs here. So in order to do this, you're probably gonna need a half inch drive socket and possibly a breaker bar as well depending on how seized up these are, but go ahead and take what tools you do have to remove our nuts here. So there's usually four nuts attaching our two U-bolts. So those broke free, pretty good. Weren't too much of a hassle there, thankfully. But again, that's what our breaker bar was for. If they fight you too much, just switch over to this and we can get them out a lot easier. So we got pretty lucky here and our U-bolts weren't too seized up. I could actually break them free with that half inch breaker bar and they're threading off pretty smoothly. So I think we're good there, I'm just gonna continue to do that. So I removed both of them. Now, if yours are seized up and they're really hard to turn, that's a lot of the times the case for these U-bolts here, you can actually take a cutoff wheel such as one you see here and just go ahead and cut the U-bolts. Your axle doesn't come with U-bolts but I definitely recommend replacing those along with your axle. They're pretty cost effective and you really don't wanna be reusing the old U-bolts. So now that we have them all broke free, I'm gonna go ahead and remove the rest of them now. So now that we have our axle free on both ends here, we can go ahead and remove it from the trailer here so we can pull out and pivot down depending on how much space you have to work with. So if you have an extra set of hands that's gonna help with this as well. Go ahead and take our new axle here and go ahead and set it into position onto our leaf springs. Line up the hole in the leaf spring perch with the knob on the top of your leaf springs. This is gonna keep the axle from shifting. So now we're gonna be securing our axle to our lease springs using a U-bolt kit. We offer plenty of different options for these here at etrailer. They do not come with your axle and they are specific to the axle diameter. So this one is 2-3/8. Therefore we're using the 2-3/8 inch U-bolts but we do have options for larger and smaller axles as well. So make sure you pick up a U-bolt kit here from etrailer along with your axle. And now we'll just go ahead and take a U-bolt here, slip it over this side of the leaf spring. We'll take another U-bolt and slip it over the other side, just like so. Now we will take our tie down plate here, line up your U-bolts with the holes in the tie down plate and then we'll secure it with the provided hardware. Got each of our nuts started here. I'm gonna come back with my impact to just snug them all up. Now, keep in mind when you're tightening these down, you wanna make sure you're doing so as evenly as possible. So you wanna tighten a couple on this side then switch over to the other side and do that same thing for the other U-bolt as well. Now we'll come back with our torque wrench here and torque all of our nuts down to the specifications listed from the manufacturer. This is gonna be an industry standard based on the size of the U-bolts. Now, again, we need to alternate back and forth when tightening. So now that we have our U-bolts tightened down, we can go ahead and reinstall our braking assemblies as well as our hub/drum. So now all that's left is we're gonna have a couple wires from our braking assembly. We'll just simply hook those up to the two wires coming from our axle tube there. You're gonna have that same thing on the other side but the other side is likely gonna have a jumper that runs up to the front of the trailer. And that's gonna do it today for our look at the line of trailer axle beams with easy grease spindles..
Info for these parts were:
Video by:
Jacob T
Video Edited:
Chris R
Installed by:
Conner L
Installed by:
Michael B
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