reelfishin
Captain
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2007
- Messages
- 3,043
Over the weekend, a buddy called me and said that the bass boat and trailer he bought a few weeks ago was eating tires.
I told him to swing by and I'd have a look at it.
I was pretty much expecting a misaligned or bent axle.
What I found was beyond belief.
Who ever owned it before must of ruined a pair of hubs, so they went to the junk yard and found two new hubs, only these had rotors attached, and the wrong bearings.
Being its got 12" wheels, the rotor part was an issue, so their cure was a rather expensive set of wheel spacers, which now moved the wheels 1/2" farther out, and by doing so the rotor cleared the inside of the 12" rims. They then I suppose realized that the wheel bearings off the junk car didn't fit the trailer axle, thus they found an outer bearing with a one inch ID to fit the rotor and spindle. To that point I followed the logic somewhat. The problem was that the inner bearing had an ID of 1 1/4", and the spindle was 1". It didn't matter, it fit over the spindle so they slapped it together. Now with the inner bearing having 1/4" of play at the inner bearing it scalloped the tires pretty bad, not to mention the top inside of the tire rubbed the fender, however, all the grease flying out of the oversize bearing and seal on the inside helped lube that situation right up.
The bad part is that they probably spent more for the two spacers and junk yard hub and rotor assemblies than they would have for a set of proper hubs. Two new hubs, new bearings and seals, and two new tires and all is well. $200 or so later and its all fixed.
The part that got me was that my buddy never noticed the huge grease splatter pattern on both sides of the boat. It looked like black undercoating all over the boat.
I told him to swing by and I'd have a look at it.
I was pretty much expecting a misaligned or bent axle.
What I found was beyond belief.
Who ever owned it before must of ruined a pair of hubs, so they went to the junk yard and found two new hubs, only these had rotors attached, and the wrong bearings.
Being its got 12" wheels, the rotor part was an issue, so their cure was a rather expensive set of wheel spacers, which now moved the wheels 1/2" farther out, and by doing so the rotor cleared the inside of the 12" rims. They then I suppose realized that the wheel bearings off the junk car didn't fit the trailer axle, thus they found an outer bearing with a one inch ID to fit the rotor and spindle. To that point I followed the logic somewhat. The problem was that the inner bearing had an ID of 1 1/4", and the spindle was 1". It didn't matter, it fit over the spindle so they slapped it together. Now with the inner bearing having 1/4" of play at the inner bearing it scalloped the tires pretty bad, not to mention the top inside of the tire rubbed the fender, however, all the grease flying out of the oversize bearing and seal on the inside helped lube that situation right up.
The bad part is that they probably spent more for the two spacers and junk yard hub and rotor assemblies than they would have for a set of proper hubs. Two new hubs, new bearings and seals, and two new tires and all is well. $200 or so later and its all fixed.
The part that got me was that my buddy never noticed the huge grease splatter pattern on both sides of the boat. It looked like black undercoating all over the boat.
