I'm seeing a little grease...

[jtathebeach]

About couple of months ago I had an inner bearing go out on my trailer and it pushed the whole hub and wheel off the spindel and dumped my boat in front of the house just as I was backing it up the gravel drive. We jacked it up but a new hub on it and took it to the repair place. Had the boat lifted and stored so they could work on the trailer. The spindel was still intact but it had a little bit of scoring on it where the hub rubbed on it. The repair shop suggested that instead of replacing the spindel that they could maching down the scoring and make it all smooth again. Saved me some money in the process. Well I just noticed today as I was hooking the boat a little spot of grease on the hull over the wheel. looked under there and there was a little bit of slung grease around the inside of the wheel. It wasn't by any means covered completely but enough to peg my curiousity. So I wipped it clean and i'm going to see if its leaking tomorrow after a test pull. It just makes me think I wish I would have spent the extra money and got the spindel replaced. Unless its just excess grease cause I just re-greased the hubs with a gun.

[bassnman81]

Keep a close eye on it. Could mean the rear seal is blown.

[taeheel2az]

Youi're OK with a smoothed spindle. All the spindle does is hold the bearing races- nothing that's turning touches the spindle itself. It would have had to be buggered up so bad the races wouldn't seat to require replacing. There's a very thin stainless steel replaceable "sleeve" (don't remember the correct name) that fits over the spindle at the axle end. This is what the plastic part of the seal rides on as the wheel turns.

You might ask the repair center if it was replaced or if they inspected it and it was nice and shiny and not scored.

[ridgerunner6901]

i dealt with a similar issue this past summer on my stratos trailer, like you i had the spindle dressed down and i put new inner seals in both sides and replaced all my bearings and the outer seals and oil hub, if there is any grease oil or grime on the inside of the hub nearest the axle you better be on the lookout for another bearing failure as that probably means that the inner seal is blown out or wasnt seated back right. leaky seals+backing a hot hub in water= more problems. those spring axles sell as a whole unit for upwards of 400 bucks and ya cant hardly find a machine shop that would put a new spindle on the axle since its a round spindle that sits on top of a square axle. looks simple enough to me but i'm just an old farm boy not an engineer. a 15 dollar seal may save you a lot of expense.