Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

I've been taking a break from building this winter (hibernating) but am SUPER excited for spring & getting to the woods again. cabin fever ACK!

if you're familiar with my build journal we've only taken this sucker out once so far & that was just a local park last fall... we're in STL & headed out to western colorado/ eastern utah this summer.

anyway, my build is on a basic northern tool 5x8 & i know i need to upgrade bearings/ high speed tires/ etc, but also realize they do a 45mph CYA rather than linking to upgrades.

so primarily i'm looking for advice on bearings/ tires... but also any first trip with a tear cross country advice would be awesome too!



hope all's well with everyone!

kent

Take the bearings out. Race and all and take them to a bearing house and get some good bearings. Fafnir, SKF, just some of the good brands. I have not had trouble with any of the Japanese, North American, European bearings I have used. As long as they are greased and installed properly. To put the race back in the hub I usually take the old one and grind the out side of it down so it will slip into and out of the hub boar. Then I use that to put against the new race and bang on the old race. They do make a nice set of special tools for this. But they cost money and don't really save me enough time for what I do. Any good quality grease these days will be good. No need for the old wheel bearing grease. I don't know about the tires you want to use. I am putting the same tire on that my tow vehicle uses so I don't have to take a spare. Thats on the one I am building. My first TD I am running it with wheels from a VW Rabbit and am running 13 inch car tires. They work just fine no need to get all excited about special trailer tires. Think of it this way. On the front wheel drive cars. The rear axle is nothing more than a glorified trailer axle and those tires work just fine and dandy.

Randy

In fact you are probably better off NOT buying trailer tires and if you get what matches your TV you are better off. I am about to pull the bearings on our trailer and will be switching to oil hubs and I will be taking off the Goodyear Marathon trailer tires and switching to Micheline Harmony car tires.

Except under heavy load the car tires are always better than the trailer tires. Except for inferior manufacturing you rarely have car tires ever throw rubber or blow which seems to be way too common with the trailer tires especially the 12" ones. They claim underinflation is the biggest culprit which might be true as the 4.80 x 12 are rated at 90psi which is insane and takes a good compressor to be able to fill to that level.

Cool... Thanks for the input!

Honestly I'm not enough of a car guy to even know off-hand the size of my TV tires, but based on eyeballing & fender size I'd guess the tear tires could be a couple inches bigger than stock I guess.

Any advice on clearance tire to fender? It's the standard axle/ leaf springs that come with the Northern Tool 5x8 & I'm not planning on any extreme off-roading or anything... maybe a little slow driving on a rutty dirt road here & there, but primarily highways & such.


Hope all's well with everyone

kent

I would say "Oh, about that much looks good" I just eye ball it. Usually measure the distance the axle can travel and set a block of wood on the tire about the right size.

Randy