Posted by Keith in Washington [172.68.142.164] on Tuesday, May 22, 2018 at 13:58:49 :
Ok guys you know that I anal when it comes to towing in terms of load and matching the truck to the load. I also am very focused on keeping the trailer and etc in very good condition.
I recently bought a used 5th wheel with less than 10K miles on it. There was a death in the family and it sat for several years. It is equipped with easy lube axles which means it has a grease seek on the end of the spindle and a channel which feeds the grease to an orface between the inner seal and inner bearing. I am not sure why they really have them excep that you can give it a couple of squirts of grease which theoretically goes into the inner bearing.
The big problem with these is that someone will pump a lot of grease into these and will blow grease past the inner seal. Centrifugal fource then takes over and spreads grease on the electro magnet friction surface and brake shoes. Then you have a non functioning brake.
To sum this up 3 of the 4 brakes on the trailer were grease soaked and not functioning. No wonder why the brakes felt weak. My wife is quite happy that I would not take it out on a trip until after I had checked everything out. You never know what you will find.
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