Anyone out there repack your own wheel bearings?

[hardinkr]

Oil Bath Bearings! This may be a bad subject to throw into this conversation, but here goes. After many years of experience with oil bath bearings on over the road trucks, we opted for them on our 2015 Dallas. We now have over 12K miles on it with no issues at all. I have heard about many issues that people were having with the seals on these bearings leaking or blowing out on the inside and soaking the brakes with oil. When we took delivery, RV's For Less had drilled a 1/16" vent hole in the center of the black rubber plug which was the recommended fix for the issue. It is working. There is not even any oil residue around the vent hole that I was fully expecting. I have no idea when or even if I need to change the oil on these bearings. So far, the oil level is still on the full mark and the color has not got any darker than original. Synthetic oil is used in these bearings so it may not get dark. On all our previous RV's we had packed bearings that I would pull and repack by hand every two years. I never trusted or used the Easy Lube system due to reported problems. Never had a bearing or seal failure in 27 years of RV'ing.

[rynosback]

I would worry about the oil getting contaminated with an open hole. Could you put a one way valve in the hole? I would think that they did it to release any pleasure build up from heat or atmospheric pressure.

[hardinkr]

I had thought that same thing but the rubber plugs are staying clean. I think the wheel hubcaps are keeping dust and other stuff away from the center of the hub because when I pull the wheels, there is nothing there. If I remember correctly, I was told and also read that the problem was heat expantion inside the space was causing the pressure build up and blowing out the rear seal. This appears to be a fact because after 12K miles with no problems on 6 wheels all is well. We have also been across several very high passes out west up to 7K feet that causes big pressure changes with no problems. I hope our luck holds.