mikegarrison

The bearing buddies are a press fit into where the grease caps go. I don't think I removed anything else. I actually had to use a hammer to get one of them to go in.

You want to pack the bearing first so that you don't trap too many air pockets in there.

rwheelz

well, the whole thing was a success including 1k miles almost dead even round trip... HOWEVER, one of my inner bearing seals leaked and covered a wheel in grease. I was careful not to overfill with the bearing buddy, not sure what happened here.

My bearings were packed with the vaseline-type grease from harbor freight, whatever it is. The good synthetic stuff I bought was nowhere even close in consistency. I cleaned off the old stuff and filled the hubs with the good stuff, but didn't do the inner bearings because they were held in by the seals.

Is replacing the seals a big problem? Do I just tear out the old ones, remove the inner bearing and repack it, then reinstall?

rwheelz

Also, for those of you who couldn't find the spare wheel bearings through harbor freight-

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Disp...temnumber=93834

ITEM 93834-0VGA

Pruhnke

Anyone interested in a set of Bearing Buddies for the 12" rims, shoot me a PM. I bought two pairs by mistake.

rwheelz

I think they are the same size as the 8" rims as well, 52mm?

LilOggi

I realize that this is an old thread but it is still relevant. In fact, I found the thread because I did a Google search for Harbor Freight trailer bearings.
I just bought my bearings in a local camping and trailer store in Hempstead, NY. They were certain they couldn't help me because Harbor Freight bearings are all metric and odd sizes, they said. The misinformation here is amazing.

The 52mm bearings mentioned above may be the correct ones for your car, but they will not fit the trailer. The hub isn't even 52mm in diameter. Also coming up in the search was a very handy and helpful website called etrailer.com. The question was asked and answered on the site and it turns out that the bearings are a standard SAE size and are generally available anywhere. The smaller and larger tire use the same hub and the same bearing.

It is L44643. The matching grease seal is 34823. You need 4 bearings and 2 grease seals. If the old ones are jammed in the hubs and you don't want to bother taking them apart, the entire hub assembly including bearings, seal, hub, lug nuts and hub cap comes as a kit (34822BX) for $26.95 per side. If the spindle stub is wrecked, the replacement (R104BT8) is $11.99. This is the address of the page: https://www.etrailer.com/question-11360.html

Glad to help out and a big "Hi!" to you all from the Solstice Forum.

freq

Solstice?!

Chuck S

Bearing Buddies merely pressurize the hot hub to keep it from sucking in cold water due to rapid cooling when you submerge your trailer wheels in cold water at the boat ramp to launch your S2000. Since no one does that deliberately (to my knowledge) the only real solution is clean and and pack the bearings periodically. Pushing more grease into dirty bearings is pointless.

Trailer bearings are notorious for not being properly packed. Trailer manufacturers just slap hubs on the suspension. Complete hub is often required when the bearing ruins the spindle.

-- Chuck

LilOggi

Why, yes!
I'd post a picture but I don't have them stored on-line and this forum doesn't seem to have a way to upload from a file.

kent2

I also found the castle nuts to be far from concentric. One was off a good 10 degrees, being so far out that would have fried bearings quickly. I replaced them both. I have well over 5,000 trailer miles on mine.