Northern Tool grease seals

[les45]

I'm a big fan of the NT 5X8 trailer but I think I found another minor quality issue. My trailer is about two years old and has been on the road for about one year with maybe 1,500 miles on it. I repacked the wheel bearings with quality grease when I built the trailer. Recently I noticed a small grease leak on my right wheel so I went to replace the seal today using new spring loaded rubber seals from NT. I found that the old seal that came with the trailer had a metal casing with a simple cone of rubber for a seal and no spring. The odd thing about the leaking seal was that it was pushed all the way in so that the outer surface was about 1/4" from the end of the hub and the seal had apparently bottomed out on the edge of the race. I have never seen a seal do this before. Since the right seal was looking weird, I decided to replace the left seal also. It wasn't leaking grease and the end was flush with the hub, but I found a small amount of contaminated grease indicating water had leaked in. I totally cleaned and repacked both sides and installed the new spring loaded seals. I'm guessing that the old metal seals simply would not make good contact for sealing in the grease and keeping out the water. I can't explain how the right seal got pushed in all the way to the edge of the race. The wheels had never been submerged so the water had to be from driving in rain which I did on several occasions. Anyone who has an NT trailer might want to check for these metal seals and see if they are leaking grease out or water in.