ALKO trailer axle not taking grease

downslope · May 7, 2012

BOBBYROGERS said:
Be careful greasing your axles that way etheir with bearing buddy's or e z lube spindles the grease you pump in has to go some wear over time and useually ends up in your breaks witch will cause a failure and if you are not jacking your trailer up to check the bearing ajustment first you can end up with more problems later. i know you said it was new that makes it more important to check the end play in your bearings to make sure they are ajusted correctly

I agree with what you're saying. I used to only see Buddy Bearing on boat trailers. I thought they were only to pump a little grease in just before backing into the water to prevent water from being sucked in when the hub got cooled from the water.

Are we really supposed to be using them for general bearing maintenance greasing? IMO probably not; every so often you should pull the hubs and repack the bearings, check brakes and seals and re-adjust. You definately don't want to push grease past the inner seals if you have drum brakes.

Johnp33 · May 7, 2012

I would manually pack the bearings and go on you trip and call the trailer company to see what satisfaction you get.
Sounds to me like the grove in the back of the inner bearing cone is not allowing the grease to get behind it.

Skyco · May 14, 2012

Found the problem, now I'm totally puzzled!
It was the grease fitting! I replaced it and axle takes grease fine.
As said previously I had removed it and it passed grease fine just stuck on end of grease gun.
Tried that again and it passes grease. Installed in the axle, you get about 2 pumps and it locks up! No obstruction in drilled passageway through axle.
When I get more time I will play with that fitting again...not immediately obvious how it can block grease when pressurized but passes grease uninstalled

:confused2:
As for the end of the axle stub being a hair too big, after a few minutes with an emery cloth strip the bearing now slips on as it should.

BTW if you have an Alko axle might want to check into spare parts before you need them. The grease seals used in this particular axle are very uncommon. Nobody in town had them, not even a Dexter distributor, nor a large bearing distributor. Had to order them to have a pair on hand.

Diamondpilot · May 14, 2012

There has to be a block in the passage or you have a bad grease gun.

Chris

Skyco · May 14, 2012

If the passage was blocked an identical zerk would not have worked.
As stated if I reinsert the culprit zerk into the axle it won't pass grease, but out of the axle on the end of the gun hose it squirts through just fine.
Identical appearing zerk works both on grease gun AND on the axle:confused2:

Tried two different grease guns, one of them powered. The powered one even has a high pressure relief that is set way up there. Relief would trigger just as the motor almost stalled. Regular old lever gun that I actually put most of my body weight on the lever with the gun resting on the tire/wheel I removed.
I know the power one is rated around 5000 PSI !

As I said- very puzzling.. I wish I had time right now to play with it again, might be a month or more though.
Very busy at work then off on a 5-6,000 mile road trip for 18 days.

Rest assured I did retain the mystery stubborn zerk and will experiment with it again

downslope · May 15, 2012

Skyco said:
If the passage was blocked an identical zerk would not have worked.
As stated if I reinsert the culprit zerk into the axle it won't pass grease, but out of the axle on the end of the gun hose it squirts through just fine.
Identical appearing zerk works both on grease gun AND on the axle:confused2:

Tried two different grease guns, one of them powered. The powered one even has a high pressure relief that is set way up there. Relief would trigger just as the motor almost stalled. Regular old lever gun that I actually put most of my body weight on the lever with the gun resting on the tire/wheel I removed.
I know the power one is rated around 5000 PSI !

As I said- very puzzling.. I wish I had time right now to play with it again, might be a month or more though.
Very busy at work then off on a 5-6,000 mile road trip for 18 days.

Rest assured I did retain the mystery stubborn zerk and will experiment with it again

Did you try backing out the troublesome zerk a little and applying the grease gun to it? I have seen zerks that either thread in too far because of too many or bad threads cut, or are machined a little too long and when threaded all the way in they hit something and the grease is blocked.