2,200 miles, all highway. Basically as new but the little wheels concern me. What measures should I take? Best lube? I'll pickup an extra wheel/tire at HF. Max speed?
2,200 miles, all highway. Basically as new but the little wheels concern me. What measures should I take? Best lube? I'll pickup an extra wheel/tire at HF. Max speed?
Lube won't do anything to keep the tire from getting hot and separating.
Watch your load capacity, keep the tires aired up.
I could go to the 12"wheels. The bolt pattern looks like it's the same. Speed will be slow, 55 - 65.
Let's do some math...
At 60mph, your standard passenger-car tires are doing something like 600 rpm. Those 8" tires are going something like 2400 rpm.
On Chinese tires.
On Chinese bearings.
Chew on that for a minute.
I once saw several times over the period of 2 or 3 days the same couple people working on repairing a trailer with tiny wheels like that that had apparently been driven until the wheel bearing welded itself into a solid mass. Doesn't sound fun to me.
Hasbro wrote: I could go to the 12"wheels. The bolt pattern looks like it's the same. Speed will be slow, 55 - 65.
I drove with mine from western NC to Mid-Ohio and back at normal highway speeds (60 - 80) with zero problems (8" wheels)
The secret is to keep going. Once the bearings melt, if you stop then they cool into a solid mass makes it hard to move when you get back from the bathroom break
Mine has 12" tires and I packed the bearings when I assembled it. Still I had bearing failure on the way home from picking up a load of parts. The wt. was probably around 900 lb. with a rating of 1100. I intend to replace the other side before I use it on a longish trip again.
Mine had a minimum amount of grease on the bearings from the factory.
I'll be packing 200 to 300 lbs. on the trailer, max.
I had an 8" wheel bearing failure after half an hour on the highway once and decided that I was done with them. I upgraded to bigger wheels and added Bearing Buddies. At the very least, add a pair of them.
I had a small sailboat on 8" wheeled trailer. Similar weight to your load. Towed it from Kentucky to south Georgia and back with no problems. 75 mph the whole way.
I have a 4x8 utility trailer with the 8" wheels. Bought it new in 1990. Repack the wheel bearings annually when you put a lot of miles on them. Used to haul wheels/tires, tools, bicycle, and other stuff and put about the miles you are suggesting every year. Should work okay if maintenance is up to date. Also those bearing buddies and a grease gun is a good idea to keep fresh grease in there (don't put too much).
I wouldn't be afraid, but I would be aware. Spare tire, spare bearing, bearing buddies and hand packed bearings. Lube and keep air in and it will be fine. I towed this as an autox trailer for thousands of miles ( including OH to KS for nationals back them) at speeds approaching ludicrous and lived to tell. Just don't turn a blind eye and expect it to be maintenance free.
Hopefully Adrian will chime in, but he has a HF trailer he uses for camping, and they towed that thing all over the place at 90mph with no problems.
Has anyone figured out a way to upgrade these HF trailers to a larger, better wheel/tire/bearing setup?
So something like a real radial trailer tire?
not sure on their bolt pattern.. but West Marine sells trailer rims with tyres premounted, inflated, and ready to go. As long as it does not rub on the fender, you can run practically any diameter rim you want (but don't do 22s unless you have the donk to go with it)
In reply to docwyte:
I have the 4x8' folding trailer 12" wheels. I've had it for going on 3 years, no issues, but probably have less than 3K miles on it. I hand packed the bearings with some good grease when I put it together.
The 4 lug pattern has been the biggest issue I've ran into when looking for upgrades. It tops out at 13" for "normal" readily available trailer wheels, larger wheels exist but are kind of pricy for a utility trailer. With 5 lug hubs you have a lot more options, but I'd be swapping the entire axle before I went to the trouble of trying to find 5 lug hubs to fit the original HF axle.
I intend at some point to put 13" wheels and some larger diameter radial tires on the trailer. Should cut down on the bounce caused by the stiff, HF, bias ply tires.
Yeah, I was thinking about replacing the entire axle. My thought is to try and get rid of the crappy HF wheel bearings/wheels/tires that you can only source from them and go to a more universally available setup.
I hope to do One Lap next year and will be towing the trailer behind the car. While I've never had an issue with it, I'd rather not rely on the HF stuff for a 5000+ mile trip.
I have logged tens of thousands of miles with the 8" tires with no issues I didn't bring on myself. Odds are pretty good you have the 1" axle, so swing by your local auto parts store for some quality "A-14" bearings if you are worried (1 1/16" axle is "A-4"). The hubs and axle are standard stuff, no sense replacing any of that.
Aside from that, those little tires almost always spec something like 60 lbs of pressure, which makes them bouncy when empty but is a requirement if you are hoping to get anywhere near the rated 750# each out of them.
Bearing buddies are a mixed bag. They are designed to pressurize the cavity inside the hub in order to keep moisture out, but unless you pump enough grease in to force a whole cavity worth of grease through the front bearing, into and through the cavity, through the rear bearing, and then out past the seal designed to not let grease out then you aren't really doing anything for the bearings. If you are going to take the hub off anyway, you would be better served drilling a hole into the cavity and installing a grease zerk in the hub on the back side of the wheel mounting flange (some old trailers have this already). Then you can pop the outer cover and fill the cavity with grease until you see the new stuff coming out through the outer bearing. Same effect for the rear bearing as the bearing buddy, except for the not trying to force used grease from the outer bearing through it, and at least the outer bearing gets new grease.
Bearing buddies are for keeping water out of boat trailer bearings.
Install quality bearings, pack with high temp "disc brake" grease, dead space in the hub(including the cap!) should be around half full of grease.
Tom_Spangler wrote: Hopefully Adrian will chime in, but he has a HF trailer he uses for camping, and they towed that thing all over the place at 90mph with no problems.
Yup, those little HF trailers are amazing for the money. This puppy has done thousands and thousands of miles. Average freeway speed is normally 80+/-mph with triple digit bursts from time to time. I bet it's closing in on 10k miles loaded now. This pics is filled with camping gear, cooking equipment, tents, chairs etc with 3 bikes on it. I've had as many as 5 bikes on top in the past. In those 10k miles I've re-packed the bearings once, and tightened up one bearing at a coffee stop on the way back from Colorado to Michigan after several hours at over 80mph. Built like tanks.
FWIW, you can get better tires and rims in the same size from trailer places. I put 8" Kenda tires (premounted on galvinized 4 hole wheels) on my boat trailer when I bought it recently. They are a HD version good for like 950lbs at 90 psi or something. Might have been $50 each, cheap insurance for decent tires. So far, so good, and I've towed it an hour each way to the lake at 75mph three times. As mentioned, the bearings are pretty much standard as well.
I just took custody of a 1967 motorboat, trailer has these. The PO pumped greased into these religeously, unfortunately the grease never made it to the rear bearings.
Disassemble, grease, repeat as necessary.
Woody wrote:
Several of the local rallycross crew have the trailers, and we make our 3-4 hour transits through the mountains at 80mph consistently. I'm not aware of anyone having problems.
A lot of talk about Chinese tires, Chinese bearings, etc....whatever. The local big trailer/RV supply place around here (where I get all the stuff for my big trailer) basically sells almost entirely Chinese bearings and tires. Even the Goodyear (Marathon) tires on my car hauler were made in China (they used to be made in USA). So are Kenda tires. So are Karrier. So are Carlisle.
Contrary to the popular thought, most factories in China "build to spec." HF stuff has a low spec, so their stuff made in China is often junk. Many other things are built to a higher spec, and that kind of stuff made in China is just as good as if it were made in Japan or US. Japan used to have a rep as "making cheap stuff" 30-40 years ago. Now we think of it as better quality than US in many cases. Just be selective on what you buy from China, and you'll be fine. The bearings made in China are probably made in the exact same large high-tech milling machine as the ones made anywhere else. It's not like it's some peasant hand-forming them, lol.
Frankly, it's pretty hard to find trailer stuff that ISN'T made in China. There's such low margin on that stuff most companies can't afford to make it in the US and still be competitive.
YMMV..but as long as you pack them well and keep the tires aired, you should be fine.
12" wheels for peace of mind would be better than 8" for a long trip, regardless of what bearing/tire you use, however. Heat is heat, and no matter the tire or bearing brand, faster rotation over long distances is going to reduce bearing/tire life.
I've loaded my 8" with about 300-350lbs of kart and gear, and towed it 5-600 miles in a go and had no issue. Keep the PSI up, the bearings packed well and you shouldn't see an issue.
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