E or D rated tires.

[diesel4life]

Nothing to over pressure as there is a 3-4 psi pressure relief at the front. Worst case scenario I have seen a minimal amount of grease dribble out the weep 2 times on a hot summer day. Other than that,never had any over pressurization issues or seal issues. As to annual checks, that goes without saying and nothing you can do or add will ever negate the benefits of hands on check ups. I typically only do around 3k a year on my trailer now so I pull and inspect the brakes and repack every two years. Im pretty anal about checking wheel and brake temps when im travelling to catch any potential problems before a full blown failure occurs. A bearing buddy does not take that aspect of maintenance out of the equation, it just adds an extra layer of protection with positive displacement.

[AH64ID]

The problem with the 100% packing that an occur is that you don't get an accurate bearing temp via the hub, it's cooler than bearing due to a lack of heat transfer.

[diesel4life]

Its not anywhere near enough to make a difference. Your talking a sealed hunk of steel with a very small cavity. If they did get hotter being packed solid they would weep out the pressure relief on a regular basis, or the seals would prematurely blow, and neither occurs. All I can tell you is they 100% work. I got my first pair from a friend who owns a large oil field maintenance company and has them on all of his flat deck and dump trailers. They all see daily use heavily loaded on secondary paved and dirt roads and muddy lease roads, and he hasn't replaced a bearing in the time I've known him, which is several years. Brakes and tires yes, but no bearings.

[Ilikeoldfords]

In my experience selling trailer running gear, neither the bearing buddys or the EZ Lube seems to keep up with actually just pulling apart the hubs and repacking. This gives the chance to actually inspect the bearings and races possibly preventing a problem in the near future.

 

The Bearing Buddys are a good concept but very often the inner bearings are left without getting new grease. The outer bearings usually get greased pretty good but what good does that do when the inners dont? Not to mention, one of the points of repacking is to get rid of the old grease much like changing the oil in your engine. The bearing buddys dont get rid of the old and possibly burnt grease.

 

The EZ Lube spindle option is not much better than the bearing buddys IMHO. On the other hand, unlike the buddys, EZ Lube does inject the grease at the inner and outer bearings equally. You still have the problem of not getting the old grease out.

 

Both are quick fixes for what should really be just pulling apart, inspecting, and repacking the bearings. Personally I dont like sitting on the side of the road with a hub that fell off my trailer so all my trailers get fully repacked about every couple of years depending on how much use they see. It really does not take that much time to do it right.

[diesel4life]

You guys are awfully hung up on associating grease buddies with "no or poor maintenance practices". As I said before, nothing can eliminate the need for periodic maintenance. You cant install a component and expect to wash your hands of any preventative maintenance, it just doesnt work like that. Also, not sure who you got your info from but having put my hands on them several times for brake inspection and maintenance your comment on the inner bearing not getting grease is misinformative. Never have I seen that problem and I've pulled them apart many times. Not so much on my trailer but on a close friend who owns an oil field service company that I help out with in the spring when he's really busy. I was over there just last week so I could put my truck on his lift to investigate some lift pump issues and he had a trailer in the other bay working on some lights and annual brake/ hub inspection and it reminded me of this thread. I asked him how long he's been running them and he pointed at the trailer next to my truck and said that was his oldest trailer and he had them installed the same year he bought the trailer which was 05. He just replaced the drum/hub assembly last year because the drums were worn out. That's 9 solid years of running an average of 10-15 thousand miles a year at high GVW on secondary and rough dirt roads and poor lease roads. He's got 2 other flat deck trailers and 2 dump trailers and no bearing failures on any of them either (only not as much time on them) That's proof enough for me.