Offroad-Express

Just over 12 months ago went to my local East Auckland garage to get a warrant for the trailer. It got failed on wheel bearings and as the garage who I had been dealing with for over twenty years was short of work and I was short of time got them to replace inner and outer bearings on both wheels. The work was done a few days later and warrant given. Imagine my surprise when 12 months later it was failed on wheel bearings again. This is only an ordinary house trailer and the previous set of bearings had lasted 20 years. In that twelve month period the trailer had done four return trips to Whitianga from Auckland meaning no more than 1600km. This time I decided to tackle the job myself and found that not only were they an imperial size but also an orphan imperial size. Saeco got the bearings for me but it took almost a week, in fact I got the last four bearings of that size in Auckland.
The trailer bearings were always well greased and the heaviest load would not have amounted to more than 450kg. When I showed the old boy behind the counter at Saeco the bearings he said the outer bearings were relatively new but the company that made the inner bearings hadn't been in business for over 20 years. So I had an account that showed I had paid for four bearings to be replaced when in fact it seems like the garage only replaced the outside ones.
I tackled the manager about this but he couldn't give a rats arse about it. I told him he might have got away with it this time but they would not be seeing another dollar of mine. I have since heard that the company has a few financial problems now, no bloody wonder.

yikes, an easy job for them got hard so they cheated.

next time they fail (20 years hopefully) best to just tickle the bearing surfaces to a common metric size.

you can never win mate, the last warrent inspection I had done on my cruiser they failed me on the brand new balljoint I put on that morning and all the other worn ones were fine?

mike wrote:yikes, an easy job for them got hard so they cheated.

next time they fail (20 years hopefully) best to just tickle the bearing surfaces to a common metric size.

My thoughts are that if going through the process again I would change to an all metric system, new hubs and stubs but I now plan on replacing the trailer with one that is larger but just waiting for one to turn up with the features I want at the right price.
They say that a satisfied customer is the best advertisement but to tell the truth i have steered plenty of people away from that particular workshop.