Back home

I am finally back in Canada after what was probably the toughest trip back we have ever had. I replaced a hub assemble and two sets of bearings on the first day and to top that off I also had a tire come off the trailer. That could have ended badly but I had pulled off the highway to see what the vibration was and was barely moving when the tire came off. Just missed a lady coming up the crossroad at the ramp.

I am sitting just outside of Smithfield in the Carolinas with the hub on the ground trying to figure out how to get the car jack under the axle. Not going to be easy to get the trailer up. A guy pulls in front of me in a pickup and hauls a hydraulic jack out of the back. He had seen the tire come off and went home and got a jack and came back to help. He stuck around long enough to make sure we had the trailer braced enough to work on the bearing, he told me where he lived if I needed some more help. I start work on the bearing and another vehicle pulls in behind me and a nice young couple jump out and offer to help. While I worked on getting everything put back together they got on the phone and found us a hotel for the night and found a place that was open Sunday morning that had parts for me. To top that off he was also a Bass fisherman. All in all we had four vehicles stop to see if we needed help which was outstanding. Kind of reminds me of the nice folks around home that would do the same.

The cause of the bearing failures was the strangest thing of  all. I have always run 50 psi in the tires on the small boat trailer with no issues. When we were in the motel I wanted to google the trailer model to see if there was an issue with them. When I took the info off of the manufacturers decal on the trailer I noticed it said 35 psi for the tires. With nothing to lose I knocked the pressure down to forty. I picked up a couple more sets of bearing Sunday morning and off we went. The bearing ran nice and cool for the next two days. Even our boat dealer was baffled by this and had never heard of tire pressure affecting the hubs. Live and learn.

Although the trip was tough no one got hurt , nothing got permanently broken and I can now change bearing with the best of them. It certainly paid off on the road to have spare bearing with me. It can be hard to get the right size sometimes when you are down on the side of the road. Now we just need the ice to go out so we can go fishing.