Trailer hubs recommendation

[geanes]

My new Morris Mule knock off was built with Timbren axle less suspension and Northern Tool hubs. I just put on the 33” wheel/tires yesterday and the passenger side hub grenaded. Shot all the bearings and fused the races to the axle. Was lucky it happened near home or the wheel could have flown off on the highway. I called Northern Tool and they said their hubs are really meant for light duty and bigger wheel/tire combos can cause failure. This is obviously a problem for an overlanding Trailer.

Now, I need to buy a new axle and 2 new hubs as there is no way I’m going to trust the other hub now.

She looked great for a day

Does anyone have any recommendations for trailer hubs that can be used in off-roading?

 

[bamabrock]

What hubs are you using?

 

[geanes]

What hubs are you using?

The trailer came with Northern Tool hubs. Timbren responded to me and suggested I use the Timbren hubs instead as they are built stronger.

Not exactly sure where the fail point occurred in the Northern Tool hub, but it was bad. Literally shot out all the bearings, lined the inside of my wheel with 1/8” of grease, broke off the cotter pin on the castle nut and welded the races to the axle. When I jacked up the trailer, the wheel flopped all over the place. Northern Tool said none of their hubs are designed for 33” tires. They said they are all designed for standard 27” trailer tires and highway use....no off road.

 

[abuck99]

Jump on Etrailer and ask them- they sell a full range of timbren products- they should know what to recommend. Post up what you find out.

 

[bamabrock]

The trailer came with Northern Tool hubs. Timbren responded to me and suggested I use the Timbren hubs instead as they are built stronger.

Not exactly sure where the fail point occurred in the Northern Tool hub, but it was bad. Literally shot out all the bearings, lined the inside of my wheel with 1/8” of grease, broke off the cotter pin on the castle nut and welded the races to the axle. When I jacked up the trailer, the wheel flopped all over the place. Northern Tool said none of their hubs are designed for 33” tires. They said they are all designed for standard 27” trailer tires and highway use....no off road.

I guess I meant hub capacity. THose are probably a 1250 lb or similar. You need a 3500 lb axle

 

[geanes]

I guess I meant hub capacity. THose are probably a 1250 lb or similar. You need a 3500 lb axle

The hubs are the 1750 lb hubs and the axles are the 3500lb axle less from Timbren. I had to run 1” adapter plates to convert the 5x4.5 pattern to our 5x150. Somehow or another the whole hub came loose and the bearings got toasted along with the axle stub. New hub will be around $60 and the new axle for the axle-less setup will be $200. I have zero confidence in the Northern Tools hub. They claim it’s their absolute best and strongest hub. But, their support team told me they are designed to road duty and not able to handle larger/heavier off road tires/conditions.

 

[Gretsch]

Sorry to hi-jack a bit here. I have no real input on what hubs to get. I have often wondered though, when parts of the bearings fuse themselves to the axle stub like that, how you go about getting the bearing remnants off without damaging the axle stub itself?

 

[ntsqd]

Looks to me like the pre-load was off or possibly the grease wasn't up to the job. I've no doubt that the lighter duty hubs would have eventually failed, but that looks like a loose bearing. How it got that way is the question. Did the hub fail and allow a race to move removing the pre-load, or did it not have the pre-load correct from the start?

Assuming that the spindle isn't damaged beyond use one removal technique is to use an abrasive cut-off wheel and cut most, but not all of the way thru the top of the race. Place a serious block of wood or possibly a hyd jack under the spindle and take all slack out. With a big chisel placed in the slot you cut hit it a bigger hammer. The idea is to crack the last little bit of the race with the wedge shape of the chisel. Sometimes relief slots need to be cut in other places on the race for this to work. Take care not to cut into the spindle where the inner race buts up against the shoulder on the spindle.

 

[geanes]

Looks to me like the pre-load was off or possibly the grease wasn't up to the job. I've no doubt that the lighter duty hubs would have eventually failed, but that looks like a loose bearing. How it got that way is the question. Did the hub fail and allow a race to move removing the pre-load, or did it not have the pre-load correct from the start?

Assuming that the spindle isn't damaged beyond use one removal technique is to use an abrasive cut-off wheel and cut most, but not all of the way thru the top of the race. Place a serious block of wood or possibly a hyd jack under the spindle and take all slack out. With a big chisel placed in the slot you cut hit it a bigger hammer. The idea is to crack the last little bit of the race with the wedge shape of the chisel. Sometimes relief slots need to be cut in other places on the race for this to work. Take care not to cut into the spindle where the inner race buts up against the shoulder on the spindle.

The spindle was damaged beyond repair. The other side is failing too. I've done some more research and found out why. It had nothing to do with bearing pre-load though. It appears that Timbren offers 2 different versions of their 3500lb, 4" drop axle-less suspension. Mine is designed for smaller road/trailer wheels and has a smaller diameter spindle. The weight of the 33" e-Rated tires led to complete failure within 50 miles. I removed the other wheel yesterday and noticed that the pre-load was fine. There was no play or binding when spinning the wheel. But, it felt "grindy". I removed the wheel and opened the hub. The grease (which was blue when I examined it before purchase) is now a grey color with a silvery sheen. I pulled the bearings and they are clearly scouring. It appears that the spindle is likely flexing under the stress of the bigger tires/wheels.

In any case, this trailer is about to cost as much to repair as what I paid for it in the first place. Pretty frustrated, pissed and sick at the same time.

 

[geanes]

Here is what I posted on Expedition portal. Hopefully my research will help others considering the axle-less setup....

The trailer I recently bought was equipped with the Timbren 3500lb Axle-less suspension. I outfitted it with 33" off-road tires and experienced a catastrophic failure of the hub that damaged the spindle beyond repair. This occurred within 50 miles of putting the new wheels on. I had driven the trailer nearly 500 miles home on it's stock 27" road wheels/tires and experienced zero issues. The bearings rolled smooth and the grease was a bluish color. I pulled the one still-working wheel off yesterday and noticed that the grease is a grey color with a silvery sheen. Pulled the bearings and they are clearly scouring. So, the other hub is failing too. Timbren is sending me a replacement spindle at cost for the one side and 2 new hubs (still cost me about $300).

Here's where it gets interesting and I think people would benefit from this research. Timbren offers TWO different 3500lb 4" drop axle-less options. The one I have is evidently designed for road tires and travel. It's noticeable in that it has a 4 bolt brake plate and uses a 2" square crossmember to connect the sides. It also uses a 5x4.5 hub. The other option is their HD which uses a heavier spindle and a 5 bolt brake plate with 2x3" crossmember and uses a heavier 6x5.5 hub. eTrailer and a couple manufacturers I spoke with say that the HD is the version to go with for off-road travel and heavier tires. They have said that the other version can induce flex when using heavier/larger tires off-road that can lead to catastrophic failure as I experienced. I am now faced with significant corrective costs as I must buy an entirely new HD setup ($800), hubs ($140) and adapters ($140) PLUS have someone cut out the 2" crossmember and replace with a 2x3". I figure this $3500 trailer is about to cost $5500 or more just to correct the issue that the wrong 3500lb axle-less suspension was put on. Additionally, I'll have a perfectly fine 3500lb 4" drop standard setup that I can't use. Hopefully someone needs one for their road going trailer and I can recover a few $$.

Anyway, hope this helps others who may build their own trailers or are looking to convert their standard axle trailers to axle-less save some hard-earned cash and time. I'm literally sick over this as all that money to fix this was intended for upgrades like electrical/solar/linear lifts, etc.

Here are the part #s and descriptions per eTrailer and confirmed by Timbren:

3500lb 4" drop HD (Off-road): Timbren Heavy-Duty Axle-Less Trailer Suspension - 4" Lift Spindle - Off-Road Tires - 3,500 lbs

3500lb 4" drop SD (road based): Timbren Axle-Less Trailer Suspension System - 4" Lift Spindle - Regular Tires - 3,500 lbs Timbr

 

[ntsqd]

I'm sorry that you've got this PITA and it is that, in large scale, but only 50 miles of presumably pavement operation should not have failed bearings that are too small without some other problem also being there. Now if the 50 miles was of serious, hard core trail then I can see them failing that fast.

The larger tires would have slowed down the bearing speed, so one normal cause of trailer wheel bearing failure, over-speeding, can be ruled out. Circles me back to the grease. Or the quality of the bearings themselves.

 

[geanes]

I'm sorry that you've got this PITA and it is that, in large scale, but only 50 miles of presumably pavement operation should not have failed bearings that are too small without some other problem also being there. Now if the 50 miles was of serious, hard core trail then I can see them failing that fast.

The larger tires would have slowed down the bearing speed, so one normal cause of trailer wheel bearing failure, over-speeding, can be ruled out. Circles me back to the grease. Or the quality of the bearings themselves.

I hear you. Still not sure what the ultimate failure point was. The trailer bounced like crazy until I realized I needed to lower the tire pressure (Discount Tire mounted the tires and pressured them to 36psi assuming they were for my LX). I drove probably 35 miles with the trailer bouncing over every bump in the road (Austin has some seriously bad roads) until I thought to lower pressure to 16psi. Smoothed the ride out considerably.

I spoke with the guys at Hiker, Boreas and 2 others that manufacture off-road trailers and their first question was what axle-less setup I had (this was before I told them about the failure). I told them I had the regular and all of them said I needed the HD setup and then asked "what failed"? All of them said the same thing....that the standard will fail with 33" e-Rated off-road tires....especially over-inflated (which mine technically were for a 700lb trailer on 3500lb rated suspension).

The other hub had no play or binding at all. But, the bearings are clearly scouring. Just can't figure out why unless the spindle is somehow flexing. The alignment and camber are spot on. Since I'm using the factory Toyota wheel with the 60mm Landcruiser offset, the centerline of the wheel is directly over the the centerline of the hub. Seems like it isn't leveraging the hub at all.

I'm simply stunned at what's happening. Talked to a fabricator and I'm looking at approx $2k to weld in a 2x3 crossmember and get the new HD axle-less setup with hubs. This on a trailer that only cost $3500. The money I had budgeted to rig the trailer with electric/solar, etc will be exhausted just getting it fixed. Oh well, first world problems I guess. Worse yet, the bolt pattern on the HD mounting is different at the frame. It uses 5/8" bolts with 5" spacing vs my standard setup that uses 1/2" bolts with 4 1/8" spacing. Might have to just weld the entire axle-less system to the frame.

The only thing I'm thankful for at this point is the trailer catastrophically failed near home and not in the wilderness of Utah or Colorado where I would have had to abandon it for weeks until parts arrived.

Hopefully this helps anyone who might be considering the axle-less setup avoid the mistake I am experiencing. If it saves someone else the headaches and thousands of dollars I'm experiencing, I'll be happy.