Trailer: hubs or drums?

Thanks Philip, I think I'll see if I can change the order.

You're not aware of any difficulties matching a new axle to old hubs in the future?

wortgames
There are two types of bearings used in most light trailers currently, they are the light duty (holden style) bearing (up to 750kg/axle as used on cheap box trailers) or the heavy duty slimline (ford style) bearing (up to 1100kg/axle as used on many 4wd trailers, smaller caravans 2 tonnes and under + other braked applications) These are the two most common arrangements.

An ethical supplier will not sell you 4wd stud pattern hubs on the light duty bearings, BUT strange things do happen sometimes.

The frormer 750kg is not used on braked axles, the latter 1100kg is.

Therefore if you want to fit drums to your axles now then you need to have the latter style axle to suite them.

This you need to know beforehand, the supplier will be able to confirm this for you.

Without the 1100kg/axle bearings you will not be able to do what you want to do.
Hope this helps, Colin.

Colin
You missed a popular bearing combination of parallel bearings where two ford inner bearings (ALKO) are used, or one ford inner and one holden inner ( vehicle components).
Cheers

Hi Colin, thanks for the replies. The trailer is a 20 year old Carac off-road 6x4 with 45mm axle and (I believe) slimline bearings. I'd like to replace the hubs ASAP as I'm working it quite hard lately and I did a bush repair on one of them a couple of weeks ago which I don't totally trust. More importantly the wheels and tyres are long overdue for replacement. I'm getting new rubber mounted on some extra rims for the car this week, so I'll have a spare set of perfectly good Rover wheels and tyres crying out to be used.

Electric brakes would be nice but with all my current expenses and a 1950's caravan project that needs a new axle first, it will have to wait. I just know that when I was pricing an axle for the caravan, I was going to have to pay extra for Rover drums anyway, so it struck me that I might as well get drums for the trailer now - providing that there aren't any problems associated with running empty drums, or with fitting them up to a new braked axle at a later date.

If the drums cost the same as hubs, then the only downside I could see would be if running empty drums was impossible or undesirable, which doesn't sound like the case?

Hi Philip, I don't quite understand what you are saying. What are Alko parallels?

When I initially enquired about the axle I was told my Rover alloys would definitely fit the Rover drums they would supply. My understanding is that the RRC wheels are interchangeable with other Land Rover models such as Series, early Disco and Defender.

The wheels I have are all the three-spoke Highline/Vogue type:



Are you saying these wheels need a special hub/drum which is different to what Alko/Carac can supply?

ALKO Parallels are stub axles which are heavy duty and have inner Falcon wheel bearings at each end of the stub axle.
To try to clarify even more, I have emailed ALKO about 3years ago when I did mineand they told me that all their studs are AF " as they are not in the car business but the caravan business"even though Rover has had metric studs since about 1970.
The PCD will be correct but AFAIK all ALKO hubs and drums have AF studs, so while the wheel will fit the studs you cannot do up the nuts.
Regards Philip A

BTW for parallel bearings the only hub available is with electric drums. That is why I had to cut mine off.
Regards Philip A

Thanks Phil, I think I get it now.

As far as I know they will be made to order so I'll suss out the stud options. Presumably the worst case is that I'll have to try and find the studs elsewhere and see if Alko will manufacture the hubs/drums to suit them.

Where did you get your studs from? Any other suppliers you can recommend?

FYI,

GalPro Engineering

will make for you any type of wheel stud that you may require, and from my experience at very competive prices..

Regards,
Ed C

:)

Any Land Rover speciialist can get the studs.
IMHO the best thing to do is get the hubs undrilled then take the hubs to a machine shop who can drill the hubs and fit the Lanrover studs.
The studs have to be countersunk to give the same EMERGED length as on a Range Rover hub, as if too long the nuts wiill not do up as they are capped, and if too short are illegal.
Regards Philip A