Hello,
In my humble opinion, bearing buddies are useless in the fact that people
that have them figure all they have to do is put a couple pumps of grease in
them once in a while, so any moisture in the bearings ends up staying there,
pitting the bearings and races, and causing failures at the worst possible
times. Also, people that pump and pump, and pump grease into bearing buddies
blow the rear axle seal riht out of them from hydraulic pressure, then they
have open bearings to road dirt and a greasy mess.

Each spring, pull your bearings, soak and repack, make sure you get all the
gas or solvent out of them that you used to soak them, fresh grease don't
like that. if the bearings are pitted, replace them and the races, they are
relatively cheap.

Buy new seals, put them in, and put the thing back together, if the cap or
bearing buddy does not appear to have a tight seal, put a thin bead of
silicone on the clean mating surface to help seal them.


"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
...
After having a Hoppy light flasher go bad a couple of weeks back, I spent
some time yesterday replacing it, and inspecting (manually and with a
meter) trailer wires. And, did all the stuff which, for three years, I
said I would do tomorrow, like make sure all trailer bolts were still
torqued right, replace the frayed strap, etc. I have Bearing Buddies, and
those are checked for grease level according to a schedule commonly known
as "Didn't you just check those an hour ago?" But, even so, I wonder.

So, I consulted with an old voodoo lady, who put candles in the boat and
threw herbs all over it, made some weird sounds that frightened the
neighbors and all the animals around the yard. She asked "When did you say
you were going to the Adirondacks?" I told her "late August". She said
"Heh heh heh...your Taurus blew an oil pump on route 81 - remember? Bad
mojo, that trip!" She poked one of the hubs with her toe, and dropped
stone cold dead, right in my driveway. As long as I was bent over to get
rid of the body, I figured I'd check the hubs, and noticed somewhat more
ooze around the Bearing Buddy on the starboard side.

Now I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to totally disassemble the
bearings, have them dumped in a parts cleaner, and repack or replace,
based on inspection. My otherwise excellent mechanic refuses to do the
job. His reasoning: "I'd have to charge you normal shop rates. But, it's
so easy, that when you see it done, you'll be ****ed off that you paid for
such an easy thing. Do it yourself. Bring donuts and I'll run them through
the parts cleaner for you".

How easy is it, really?