How many wheel bearing do you have that require packing??

JD2ACWD posted below about tires. Another thing we have is the wheel bearing/hubs those tires go on. So think about how many bearing you have that should be packed and adjusted.

Thirty years ago I bought a brand new J&M eight ton running gear to put a gravity box on for fertilizer. I was doing a good bit of custom no-till planting back then. Most of the guys wanted dry starter fertilizer in the row so we would just go and get it in the gravity wagon. It had hydraulic auger to load the planter boxes. Just about on the last field out of more than a 1000 acres all over the place, the rear wheel fell off of the new J&M running gear. I checked it and it did not have any grease in it. I do mean ZERO. I check the other hubs and they too where all dry. It had been assembled at the factory with out any grease. I never checked it as it was brand new. I was buying 2-3 of these gears each year so I check the others I bought that year and they had grease in them. We usually hauled 6-8 ton of fertilize at road speeds as the wagon pulled well. Thinking about how that wheel could have came off on the road at speed really sent a chill up my back.

So when planting was all over I decided to check all of those type of hubs on everything I owned. So my oldest son and I removed an washed out the old grease on every wheel bearing on the place. While we had them apart I drilled all of them so they had grease zerks on them for the future. We went through 10 cases of good tube grease filling all of the hubs back up. The real pain was I did not have any type of power grease gun so that was all pumped out by hand.

Here is rough count by memory of how may wheel hubs we did:

12 gravity wagons x 4 = 48
18 flat bed wagons x 4= 72 (lots of little bales)
five tractors x 2 = 10
all implements(guess) 20 (disk, chisel plow etc.)

So that was over 150 sets of wheel bearings we cleaned/checked/repacked.

How many do you guys have???? Does that make you think about all of the potential bearing/seal issues a guy could have??

Just go buy all OEM JD bearings from the most expensive dealer around... They'll be bullet proof and you won't hafta packem :shock:

Right????

Waaaaaay tooooo many, I usually pack and check every thing when I bought it, new or used and that pretty much the only time they have been looked at. My career of using machinery is slowly drawing to a close, the boys can do them next time.

I thought about this once, mind boggling, and note to self, "try not to think about these things", then I forgot the guy I was helping with hay and all those, though there is a quantity of them, its always worth doing, had a borrowed wagon from another farmer we get hay from, hub went not far from the barn lucky it did not catch fire, loose a wheel, 200+bales I stacked on myself from his mow, winter time, but still. So I matched bearings from napa, cleaned, lubed installed, cleaned and lubed the other 3, did some neat welding repairs while it was here, some things broke before we used it, and from age, so it was field ready when done, don't you know it, he loses a tie rod, or drag link first time in the field, thought someone (us) sabotaged it, but still a nice reasonable type, and I explained about repairs done, I would never have sent it back to him like that, felt nice to have it all done as thanks for the use, glad that link did not come off on the road though !!

Reminds me of a question that I heard a few years ago: "What if you had to replace every tire that is on your farm at the same time?"

I gave it some thought and came to the conclusion that would be a really large sum of money to come up with all at once!

hey, jd, you have two brg on each wheel. at least i do. wally

Let it lie Dave. We all have a little disagreement once in awhile. No reason to ruin a friendship over something trivial.

used to buy sell equimpent at auction ( John T rember stilesville ind). Standard practice on any towed purchase,buy coffee, maybe for others save cups , pop off small cap from hub, punch hole in side of cup , slide on hub. By pouring oil in hole waiting 10 min. oil would soak into both bearings. sometimes seal would let oil out but not often. Never had wheel come off towing home.

Good advice, JD.

Wheel bearings are often overlooked, being "out of sight, out of mind," and, unlike automobiles of years past, are not routinely repacked upon brake replacement.

My neighbor was pulling 2 gravity wagons of beans to the river terminal last fall with his truck, a distance of less than three miles. Upon crossing the first rail of the railroad track the right front spindle of the front wagon broke and dropped down between the rails. His truck would not pull it off of the tracks.

No further harm done but things were rather tense for awhile until they were able to move things.

The bearing was dry.

Dean

Ah Stilesville , sure do miss them days , Getting your donkey chewed out by John for not bidding enough on one of his pieces meeting new friends , seeing old ones.

Wonder if I had meet you back then I used to leave semi load of grain bins and sell many augers. never went much in summer, but was winter pastime at least once a month.

wally_mi read my posting more closely. I said sets down in the text.