buttery grease

[GreeCguy]

Now that I'm working on two trailers, seems that trailers have become part of my life. My neighbor bought a used trailer yesterday and this afternoon wanted to clean and repack the bearings. I went over to offer help and chit chat in a neighbor way.

According to him, as he was driving this trailer home, it would sometimes develop an odd "shimmy" between 35-40 mph. He thought the wheel bearings might either be loose, dry or going bad. Yet when we pulled the wheel, the hub was not loose and the bearings were filled with grease.

However, the old grease had the consistency of soft butter, almost to the point of being runny. The trailer is about ten years old and has "bearing buddies" on the axle and I don't think the bearings have ever been cleaned or repacked. Grease was a solid grey color and had a few tiny metal flecks in it that sparkled in the sun.

Question: Why was the grease so runny? Was it old or the wrong kind of grease? Why the "shimmy"? The bearings are made in China - are they going bad and possibly about to fail?

After we repacked the bearings and reinstalled everything, we took it for a test drive. It did shimmy one time for about 30 seconds, it felt like something was coming loose for a few seconds but then cleared up. We took it out on the highway and got up to 60 mph with no problem. Trailer pulled smooth with no problem and aside from the one "shimmy" at the beginning, all went well.

Are a set of new bearings in order? Thoughts, opinions, ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[spasm3]

Lot of things can cause that. Is the axle perpendicular to the tongue? The type of tires on it . How level the tongue is when hitched. And where its loaded in relation to the axle. A load behind the axle and light on the tongue can cause this.

Edit, also bent axle or stub also.

 

[Chris142]

If the bearings were not pitted they should be ok to reuse. The bearings would have to be real loose to cause a shimmy. Spasm3 has some good places to start looking.

 

[Ken2]

Quote:
Why was the grease so runny?
Likely has water emulsified in it.

I really don't like Bearing Buddies on anything except a boat trailer. Their real purpose is to have a positive pressure grease reservoir when warm bearings are backed into cool water. The cold causes a contraction and the reservoirs push grease into the bearings instead of water sucked in.

Bearing Buddies otherwise give a false sense of security. The grease needs to be renewed perodically because it gets dirt or water into it, or it oxidizes from heat & age. Bearing Buddies do none of this. Plus the cheapest possible bearings and seals, and it is inviting trouble. There are travel trailer hubs with a flushing grease system where a zerk fitting is on a spindle with a grease passage bored in it. The grease travels from the gun through the spindle, pushes against a special seal, through the inner bearing, through the outer bearing, and to waste ports. This works well to flush and renew the grease.

 

[Oldmoparguy1]

Toe-out will sometimes cause trailer shimmy. Loose wheel, bent axle, axle not square to the tongue, something loose, spring, spring eye, U-bolt.

Wayne