Our luck ran out today!

[Occupant5143]

After years of relatively trouble free RVING we had a major failure today. Coming down the steep mountain passes of the Rockies on I-70 someone passing us was pointing at the back of our trailer. I looked in the mirror and my heart sank when I saw smoke coming from the left rear wheel. After pulling off and finding a safe place to pull over I took a look at the inside of the wheel. What I saw scared me. The axle spindle was just resting on the bottom of the hub cup. The brakes were covered with grease. We're lucky in avoiding real disaster. I called AAA and they will send a flatbed truck to take the trailer 50 miles to some RV repair shop. I'm not optimistic that we'll be on the road soon.
I'll update this report when I get the prognosis.

[snakebitten]

Sorry to hear your misfortune. But I agree that it is good fortune that it wasn't more serious.

Don't be too pessimistic though. You're in an awesome part of the country and I suspect these kinds of things are far from rare there. You might just find yourself in good hands and get taken care of well.

I say that because I've needed "work" done a couple of times in the small towns of the Rockies and both experiences were much better than expected. Seems the locals are used to their environment being harsh to their machinery.

Good luck!

[hddecker]

Ouch!

Thankfully you got it stopped before it was catastophic. What you are describing sounds like a bearing disintegrated.

[lcv800]

Bummer, but could have been so much worse. I agree with snakebitten. People out there have learned to be miracle workers.
Rusty

[Handyman]

We had THREE blowouts on our 6-month old camper during our last excursion. Luckily, no major damage. I spent over $700 and still must pay $140 for the damage plus I'm replacing the other tires. And the tire company will only reimburse me for their cost of the three tires, $276.

I've just ordered a tpms so hopefully I'll be alerted to a flat tire before it flies apart.

[RickNTee]

My brother recently had a blowout on his trailer and it caused some damage to his flooring under the sink. Great you have AAA. That's why we have that coverage.
Glad to hear you avoided a major problem, it could have been much worse.

[Occupant5143]

Update - the trailer was flatbed hauled to the repair shop. It will be a couple of days before they can get to it. The preliminary diagnosis is bearing failure and the axle spindle is damaged to the point that the whole axle will need to be replaced.
I'll provide more info as it becomes available.

[snakebitten]

Originally Posted by Occupant5143

Update - the trailer was flatbed hauled to the repair shop. It will be a couple of days before they can get to it. The preliminary diagnosis is bearing failure and the axle spindle is damaged to the point that the whole axle will need to be replaced.
I'll provide more info as it becomes available.

Until then, soak up the scenery!
A day stranded in the Rockies beats a week ..................(fill in the blank)

[hddecker]

Originally Posted by snakebitten

Until then, soak up the scenery!
A day stranded in the Rockies beats a week ..................(fill in the blank)

Bruce,

I bet you make great lemonade!

[snakebitten]

Yea, I suppose that's true.
But then, lemons only present 2 choices.

[azdryheat]

Bearings - something I've been considering doing but not till it cools off some here.

[Relheok]

Just did mine this week before a 1200 mile round trip


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[Occupant5143]

Just got off the phone with the repair shop. Outer bearing bad, spindle damaged, will require a new axle. Believe it or not he said I probably over-greased the hub with my grease gun (it has e-z lube hubs) and grease bypassed the seal and coated the brakes.
The axle is made by Lippert and is not like the Rockwell axles they are used to seeing. The hubs have much larger inner bearings to handle the GVWR of this trailer. Therefore they will order a new Lippert axle with identical rating configuration. They will also check the other hubs for problems and clean the brakes if needed. This whole repair will take 3-4 weeks (hopefully).
I've learned my (expensive) lesson. From now on I'm manually packing the bearings or have a pro do it.

[lcv800]

I was told that unless you have a boat trailer, not to use the EZ Lube for just that reason. Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Able to get home okay without rig?
Rusty

[Occupant5143]

Originally Posted by lcv800

I was told that unless you have a boat trailer, not to use the EZ Lube for just that reason. Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Able to get home okay without rig?
Rusty

Yep. We drove home in the tow vehicle with an overnighter in Santa Fe. Now we will wait till we can pick it up and resume where we left off. Of course it will take another two day trip to get to the shop and a day to restock the fridge since we had to empty the contents before we had it hauled off to the repair shop.

[hddecker]

Like everything, there is a right way and a wrong way of doing things. The EZ Lube spindles aren't meant to replace an annual cleaning, inspection and repack. When you add grease the wheel needs to be off the gound and rotated to the grease gets evenly distributed.

When I was running electric drum brakes and had to adjust them while traveling, I would give each spindle a pump of grease, just enough to keep the cavity between the bearings full of grease. Now that I won't have to be adjusting the brakes every 3-5000 miles, That practice has gone from my mid trip maintenance list.

I doubt that it was over greasing that caused the bearing to fail though, failures like you described are usualy the result of grease not getting into the bearing races.

To bad you didn't take the camper to an axle shop, when I upgraded the brakes, I had new axles built by an axle shop. A set of 6K axles cost me a whole lot less than Lipperts 5200# axles.

[Occupant5143]

Originally Posted by hddecker

Like everything, there is a right way and a wrong way of doing things. The EZ Lube spindles aren't meant to replace an annual cleaning, inspection and repack. When you add grease the wheel needs to be off the gound and rotated to the grease gets evenly distributed.

When I was running electric drum brakes and had to adjust them while traveling, I would give each spindle a pump of grease, just enough to keep the cavity between the bearings full of grease. Now that I won't have to be adjusting the brakes every 3-5000 miles, That practice has gone from my mid trip maintenance list.

I doubt that it was over greasing that caused the bearing to fail though, failures like you described are usualy the result of grease not getting into the bearing races.

To bad you didn't take the camper to an axle shop, when I upgraded the brakes, I had new axles built by an axle shop. A set of 6K axles cost me a whole lot less than Lipperts 5200# axles.

When I did the lube I was rotating the wheels. All that did was get more grease in. Here's the frustrating part. Originally I didn't want to lube the bearings. I called a local outfit to come and re-pack the bearings and adjust the brakes. They were too busy to come out in a timely manner so I went ahead and used the grease gun with the EZ-Lube hub and adjusted the brakes myself. Never again!

I took the trailer to a general automotive shop that has considerable experience with axles. But normally they order Rockwell axles for their trailer jobs. But they discovered that Lippert is not Rockwell.

As far as the overgreasing goes, they did not really claim that it was the cause of the problem but that they observed there was a lot of grease on the brakes and assumed the grease seal ruptured. I'm not sure about that either so I have asked them to keep all of the parts for me to look at.

[wahoonc]

I wouldn't be surprised if the grease seal wasn't damaged to begin with. There is a thread somewhere about damaged grease seals, looked like someone used a big screwdriver and a hammer to install them.

Aaron

[hddecker]

Originally Posted by Occupant5143

When I did the lube I was rotating the wheels. All that did was get more grease in. Here's the frustrating part. Originally I didn't want to lube the bearings. I called a local outfit to come and re-pack the bearings and adjust the brakes. They were too busy to come out in a timely manner so I went ahead and used the grease gun with the EZ-Lube hub and adjusted the brakes myself. Never again!

I took the trailer to a general automotive shop that has considerable experience with axles. But normally they order Rockwell axles for their trailer jobs. But they discovered that Lippert is not Rockwell.

As far as the overgreasing goes, they did not really claim that it was the cause of the problem but that they observed there was a lot of grease on the brakes and assumed the grease seal ruptured. I'm not sure about that either so I have asked them to keep all of the parts for me to look at.

Let me get the egg off my face!

Of course there will be grease soaked brakes, the grease seal is the soft part of the hub. When the bearing started to go, the grease seal would fail first and the grease would be thinned from the heat.

[DesertRat]

Glad it worked out okay for you. If you RV long enough you'll find yourself on the side of the road broke down. Has happened to me a couple of times. Lost a turbo once. Lost two tires within 10 miles on a 117 degree day. Lost a hi pressure oil pump 85 miles from closes dealer & couple hundred yard from no cell service.
Have those thing stopped me from RVing.
No way when you can see sites like this.