Oil verses Grease on bearings

[rblanch]

I saw a you tube video where the guys at Etrailer installed disc brakes on a trailer and used oil on the bearings instead of grease. It seems like a good Idea but I worry if the seal does get a leak it could be a huge mess on the disc brakes. Also seems you would have to address it right away where as if the grease seal leaked you could probably wait till you got home. My questions are does anyone have experience with oil verses grease and is the only difference in installing the oil is the seals or are the bearings also different?
Thanks

[consolenut]

Probably did the oil bath conversion. Oil bath is common on many dual tandem cargo trailers. Granted its expensive and many elect to go cheap.

[mhs4771]

Here's the info I got from a MORryde Rep:
Oil Bath bearing are great to Over the Road Trucks, because they're always moving.
With an RV it sometimes sits for months without moving, thus the oil would drain off the upper section of the bearings not in the oil, so when you started moving part of the bearings would be dry and also possibly have some rust.
So he recommended staying with tried and true Grease for RV use.

[jacknife]

Makes sense.

[NDIrish]

Over the last few months, I've seen more and more gooseneck trailers with the wet hubs converting to greased hubs. They say that it's a little bit of hassle to grease the hubs every few thousand miles but the change is worth it to not have to worry about the hubs/caps/seals leaking and contaminating their brakes and seizing up the bearings when they loose all of their oil.

[Jay D.]

I can't imagen why one would want to use the oil method unless you were putting 30,000 or so miles a week on your rig. for all the rest, grease has work good for a 100 years.
Jay D.

[rblanch]

I'm going to stick with the grease with the toy hauler I was just wondering if I missed something. I had to re do the brakes on my boat trailer this weekend and it has the vault hybrid grease lubrication no maint. system on the trailer I have been backing it in the water for over 10 years now with no problems. Since I had everything apart I knocked off the caps and everything looked like new after 10 years. Does anyone know if this system can be used on 5th wheels with 8000# axles.

[consolenut]

8k axles you can get the conversion kits to oil bath

[09 harley]

Originally Posted by Jay D.

I can't imagen why one would want to use the oil method unless you were putting 30,000 or so miles a week on your rig. for all the rest, grease has work good for a 100 years.
Jay D.

Let me figure this out. If you drove 8 hours a day or 56 hours in a week you would have to travel 535 miles every hour. That means you would have to average 535 mph. Might be difficult on our city streets and freeways. Could this even be accomplished on the Bonneville Salt Flats? I would think the bearings might fail from overheating.

[Jay D.]

Originally Posted by 09 harley

Let me figure this out. If you drove 8 hours a day or 56 hours in a week you would have to travel 535 miles every hour. That means you would have to average 535 mph. Might be difficult on our city streets and freeways. Could this even be accomplished on the Bonneville Salt Flats? I would think the bearings might fail from overheating.

it was just a figure of speech you got the idea didn't you.
Jay D.

[09 harley]

Just trying to understand the reasoning in the comment that seems to show disdain for using an oil bath. They have their place but maybe for automotive or RV use it’s not necessary. That’s understandable isn’t it?