This weekend was a pretty eventful one... With the warmer weather starting to show up, I knew it was the time of year to start prepping our travel trailer for the Summer.

Ever since I was a young kid I can remember helping my dad repack the wheel bearings on the trailers that we would take camping. I am not going to glamorize it here, it is a messy tedious job that I quite honestly kind of hate.

If you don't want to be one of those guys sitting on the side of the expressway while everyone else is heading for some fun in the sun up North, it is a necessity.

Many times when you see someone pulling a trailer on the side of the road with a blow tire, it isn't because the tire was bad. It's actually because the wheel bearing was bad which causes the axle to seize and then the tire drags instead of actually turning and blows. Sometimes the thing just completely comes apart too...

When you think about those little boat trailers or even a travel trailer, those wheels are often much smaller than the wheels on your truck or tow vehicle. This means it takes them multiple revolutions to go the same distance that your tow vehicle tires do in one revolution.

Many people with boat trailers (that are in and out of the water) or regular trailers don't consider this fact and they neglect the maintenance on them. Additionally, many newer trailers(like mine) have a zerg nut that you can apply grease to the bearing without tearing it apart. They figure just giving it a couple of squirts each year should be enough. Sometimes it is, but other times small particles of dirt and dust can make their way into the bearing. This can cause damage to the bearing in the form of pits and scratches which can then cause the bearing to stop spinning properly.

My truck is in the shop, so I borrow my father in laws truck and ran over to my parents where I store my trailer for the winter. I pulled it up into the driveway and proceeded to jack it up.

Once I had it jacked up, I realized I had forgotten to loosen the lug nuts on the tires, so I had to lower it back down, loosen them up and then jack it back up. Luckily my dad has an air compressor with an impact wrench so it was a quick job to get the tire off.

Once you have the tire off, that silver piece with the rubber cap pops off and behind it is the nut that holds the outer bearing on. I apologize that I didn't get the number of pictures I had hoped to. This is a very dirty job and I didn't want to get my phone all greasy trying to capture shots! There are some great YouTube videos out there that document the process if you are thinking about attempting it yourself.

This is what it looks like when you have all of the parts out. There is the cap, the outer nut (held on by a cotter pin), then a washer followed by the outer bearing. Once you have those things off you can pull the whole wheel hub off and the inner bearing is inside of that covered by a grease seal which I pictured at the opening of this post.

This is a picture of the wheel hub after I removed the grease seal and the inner bearing. The first thing you need to do is clean up all of the old grease. I swear I go through about five rolls of paper towels when I am doing this job (and that might be a bit conservative).

The parts go in a pan of diesel fuel to be scrubbed and cleaned. It is amazing how all of the grease tends to just fall off of the parts. They make special cleaning solutions but diesel works just as well. The one thing you probably don't want to do is use regular unleaded gasoline. It is much more combustible than diesel gas and you could end up with a big problem if the parts happened to create a spark.

The big socket in the picture isn't one of the parts, it is just want I use to remove the inner bearing. I slide it in the hub where the axle would go and I use a hammer to pound out the inner bearing and grease seal from the other side.

This is what the parts looked like after I got them relatively clean. I used brake cleaner and and the air compressor to blow out any of the bits of grease that were left. Even though my grease seals looked to be in pretty good shape, my dad advised against reusing them. That meant I had to take a drive into the city to buy some new ones. After visiting a couple auto parts stores and coming up empty handed, I headed to the local RV store and they had a bunch of them for about $3.50 a piece. I purchased the four I needed for the job and drove back out to my mom and dad's in the country.

Thinking back, I should have bought and extra to keep on hand. I like to keep a spare set of bearing in my truck just in case... It can mean the difference between being able to fix something yourself of needing a tow.

New grease seals in hand I checked each of the bearings for any sign of damage (scratches/pits), and then I set about running them through the new grease. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, but you basically just smear the bearings in grease making sure you get some in ever single crevice. They make tools that are supposed to make it easier and less messy, but I've never tried them. Finally, you just assemble everything back in reverse order, check to see the tire spins and you are good to go. I will note that when you are putting the outer nut back on, you need to tighten it all the way, then back off the nut a quarter to a half turn and slide your cotter pin through. It seems weird that you wouldn't want the nut that holds your wheel on to be tight, but that is just the way it is.

Here are some closer shots of the bearings.

I hooked up the trailer and started to head home. The trailer takes up a lot of space in our driveway, so I am always a little sad to bring it home each year. Knowing that it means we get to go camping soon makes up for it though.

@mrsbozz wasn't home when I brought the trailer home. Usually, I am pretty good at backing it into the driveway, but I must have been out of practice this time:

That's right, I backed the trailer into our house... This isn't the first time that has happened, but this is the first time that I took one of the gutter nails with me when I pulled it forward.

The nail went all the way through to the inside of the trailer. Luckily my friend was coming to visit that night and he is quite the handyman. Not wanting to damage the fiberglass exterior any more than we already had, we instead pulled the nail through from the inside (think of how you would push an arrow through someone instead of pulling it out). After that it was a simple matter of applying some silicon caulk to the outside that by some miracle actually matches the color really well.

With the bearings all done, I returned the truck to my father in law, came home and mowed the lawn and then got the ribs started for my friend and I. We had a great evening eating drinking and talking until 3 in the morning.

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