Anybody have long term experience using oil bath hubs

[xmodel94]

The trailer is going on 2 years old now. No issues and I don't trailer as much as I used to, but I still get some 200+ mile pulls in.

Anybody have long term experience with them?
Road side emergency supplies thought?

I don't really have any idea on how to service or replace them if I needed to. thanks.

[boatwakes]

We've got a 2015 and I'd estimate 9,000 miles since I bought it. They've been great but I know they can go sour and screw up the whole axel. They are unserviceable but when they go they usually destroy just the spindle. Fortunately the spindle is a bolt-on item and replaceable. When we were towing the boat back to Southern California from the dealer in the middle of Arizona, I noticed one of the tires was askew. I pulled over and checked it out with a straight edge against the other one and it was out 3". This had been causing the tire to wear severely prematurely so I swapped the two for the rest of the drive back. Ended up having to order a new axel from Boatmate because the whole axel was bent, previous owner probably rallied a curb at some point. Replaced it in a couple hours and turns out the dealership had shipped one as well so now I have a spare. So they can take a lot, especially if my tire had been out of whack for at least the 2,000 miles we put on it before it was noticed.

I would suggest keeping a spare spindle. Be careful during replacement because the splined axel is held in preload by a spring in the boxed portion of the axel. Be sure to mark the splined axel along with the previous spindle so you can compare and install the new spindle correctly indexed, otherwise the tire and wheel will be taking too much or too little weight.

[Rumbo09]

I’ve been running oil bath hubs in heavy equipment trailers (30,000 lbs and up) for nearly 20 years. Knock on wood….never had a bearing failure in any of these trailers. Far better than grease lubed hubs in my opinion. These are heavy duty trailers that are used and abused. I run mine 10,000-20,000 miles per year. My oldest trailer is a 1987 and it is a workhorse.