U-Joint Prepacking

Ford specifies in the services bulletins for the AA trucks to pre pack the joint with 8 ounces of grease.
 
James Rogers said:
What about the boat trailers that are used on the sport fishing circuit? These trailers carry boats upward of 3000 pounds for tens of thousands of miles and are subjected to being submerged in water over and over without any bearing failures using the bearing buddies. I fished this circuit several years and never had a competitor fail to make a tournament because of a failed wheel bearing. The boat and travel trailers that have bearing failures many times are because these trailers sit for sometimes months or years with little or no maintenance to the bearings. I would never own a trailer without these devices or at least repacking the bearings every time I pull my trailer any distance over 100 miles.

Keeping Trailer Wheel Bearings Going Round And Round​


By William D. Siuru, Jr., PhD, PE [Learn More]​
Repacking wheel bearings on modern trucks, SUVs and RVs might be beyondthe capabilities of many do-it-yourselfers mainly because it usuallyinvolves disassembly and assembly of sophisticated disc brake systems. Incomparison, repacking of wheel bearing on trailers is relatively easy.
Bearings on today’s vehicles don’t usually have to be touched until a brake job is done. This is not the case with trailers. Wheel bearings on trailers with regular sized tires should be repacked every 10,000 miles on trailers used regularly, especially if they are heavily loaded. You can get by with repacking every two years on trailers that are lightly loaded and do not see many road miles. On trailers with tiny wheels like boat trailers they should repacked as often as every 2,000 miles. The smaller the wheel, the faster the bearings spin, and the greater the need for goodl ubrication.

If the trailer has a Bearing Buddy and an E-Z Lube grease cap, bearing problems are less likely to leave you stranded. The Bearing Buddy typically covers the end of the spindle and there is a grease gun fitting in the center. Because fresh grease only gets to the outer bearing, wheels still should be pulled and repacked normally to grease all bearings. In contrast, the E-Z Lube hub also has a grease fitting which now includes an orifice that routes grease to both the inner and outer bearings. Repacking still needs to be done, but at about half the normal frequency. With both, you can get enough grease into a hot bearing to get you home or a service facility, so carrying a greasegun in you tool box might be a good idea. It could prevent ruining a wheelspindle. ---found on "new car buying .com"

It is obvious that even with the Bearing Buddy trailer bearings require a reduced srevice interval, with proper lubrication in other applications the service interval can be much longer ---up to 100 times or more, for instance the rear wheel bearings on a Mercedes of the 80s using Timkin bearings , when the whole housing is filled with grease the life is about 50,000 miles, and there is grease all over the brakes, and failed bearings, properly packed the life is in excess of 300,000 miles, where I work the bearing packing job is expected to last the life of the rotors without failure, and with many customers that put in excess of 50,000 miles a year on their car it is easy to know what works, and what fails.

With a model A the sizes of the bearing surfaces in relationship to the loading allows it to survive much abuse.
Click to expand...
 
I'm digging out this old thread because I'm currently rebuilding my rear axle and also had to take down the torque tube and therefore also opened the U-Joint.


Sadly I've not taken a picture but what I found is a lot of grease inside the u-joint housing, next to the grease fitting but nowhere near the the u-joint... I think I could say that I was lucky and the oil from the transmission leaked into the U-joint housing because the grease didnt lubricate a lot.



As I want to put all parts together, I then asked me a next question, if I use a grease gun, how should that grease get to the roller bearing if its hardly getting to the u-joint?


what about the INNER DRIVE SHAFT SEAL? What is is there fore? is it to keep the oil from the rear end flowing into the u-joint? Or keeping the grease/oil from the u-joint away from the rear end?

Maybe I was lucky there too and the original seal was leaking an the roller bearing got at least some lubrication from the rear end?




is grease the right choice? or wouldnt something more liquid be better?
 

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I kind of miss Dick Spadaro. I didn't always agree with him but he was a good source for parts. These old threads bring back memories.

John Deere developed the corn head grease for the corn header gear boxes. They have an input shaft and multiple output shafts. With all those seals, thay had troubles keeping the lube in there. The thixotropic stuff did the job and works a lot like the mixture of gear lube and soda soap that was used back in the day. This thickened mixture would stay in the housing better and still ooz into the u-joint bushings to keep them lubed. JD corn head grease and a few other thixotropics will do the same job.

The picture was from near 10-years ago so it is gone now. Likely a photobucket deal.
 
Bought a few tubes of John Deere thinking it would solve the issue with some vendors' 600wt which is modern SAE 140 oil, too thin. Using the cornehad in the ujoint became liquified and tended to drip a little. Using it at the steering gear was a little better because it is not being churned by continuous motion. I use modern SAE 250 or better in the pumpkin and ******.
 
For What It's Worth....


I can't remember when last I gave the u-joint a shot of grease. I do check & top off the ******. Out put shaft bearing is 'sealed'...except of course the splines on the shaft which feed ****** fluid directly to the u-joint.


A week ago I removed the u-joint covers to find it full of a black 'slury' made of grease & 600W. 'Home made' worked perfectly.
 
I thought that worthless Photobucket stopped holding people's pictures hostage, but I guess they are back at it again.
 
the main question here is how grease a rebuilt and clean u-joint.


best option till now sounds like a mixture of grease and 600w and that in a volume to fill up the u-joint cover...



would be interesting to know what Brent is using when he rebuilds his project.
 
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