Axle Maintenance FYI

[Kenw]

To all,
This is an FYI
After reading many many posts here on axle maintenance I finally got into performing mine. I have a 2017 Montana HC 370 BR, 7000# axles with the e-z lube system, 18 months old now, approximately 4200 miles on the axles, stickered weight 11850 pounds, axles produced March 2, 2017. I did not use the e-z lube system and opted to pull the hubs, clean everything, replace the bearings with Timken and replace the grease seals. The grease in the hubs was red in color. Here is what I found...

Hubs 1-3 Everything was good, not a lot of grease and virtually none in the cavity between the bearings, no scaring but one small brown mark the size of my thumb nail in one of the outer bearings.

Hub#4 The front bearing had very very little grease in it. I could see through every cavity of the bearing as it didn't have any grease in it and a small brown mark in the interior race. The rear bearing troubled me! The amount of grease was OK but it was black in color and it seamed to have very small (shiney)particulates of metal in it. When I say black I mean black! There was a little wear on the bearing but if I were not replacing them I would have put it back in.

Dexter needs to put more grease in these assemblies and Keystone needs to tell their supplier to add more grease. Gee, Dexter/Keystone must be saving 50 cents per axle by providing the minimum amount of grease possible.

Ken