The Dark Horse team sees a lot of trailers come through our doors. Having worked in the ranching and rodeo industry for quite a while we understand the importance of a well maintained high quality trailer to haul your loads. Therefore, we help our clients get up to speed and make sure they are pulling and transporting trailers that are safe and will get the job done.
One common question we get a lot is when we tell clients they need to pack their trailer bearings properly. So, how does someone properly pack a trailer bearing?
We explain it below, but to make it easier watch the video of our head welder explaining the proper way to pack a bearing.
How to Pack a Trailer Bearing
When looking at a bearing you can see the steel needles rolling around while the center stays put. When your wheels are going the needles are spinning constantly. Therefore, they need to be well lubricated.
The term packing your bearing means that all of the gaps you see between the needles have to be stuffed full of grease or packed full of grease. That’s what someone means when they tell you that you need to pack your bearing.
This is an old school packing method. You’ll see how the bearing is angular. You want to pack the grease from the wide side until the grease comes out through the narrow opening at the top.
Take a palm full of grease and gently put pressure down and slide the bearing across your palm, picking up the lubricant along the way. You just repeat this on every part of the bearing. You’ll begin to notice that there is not rattling occurring in your bearing.
You cannot simply rub grease all over the bearing. This will not compact the grease into that space effectively.
Once you have the grease packed into the bearing you’ll want to lock the inside ring from turning and begin to turn the outside bearing so you are pushing that grease all over those needles. Once you have the bearing completely packed and the grease is poking out of the top, then you can take your grease and rub it all over to get residual grease for your trailer hub and give you proper bearing lubrication.
