Bel Ray blue grease, awesome stuff

 CAstrol heavy duty, its blue, thick and good.

Anyone else use bearing buddies? I switched to just having a bearing cap, found that better. 

HTB grease as it doesn’t melt like the marine stuff 

thanks guys!

interesting to hear the feedback on the bearing buddies! first time i have used them, so will have to see how they go. definitiley doesnt sound like they are as reliable as i was hoping......

  One of the guys I spoke to at Martins Trailer Parts doesn't like the BB's at all - having said that I've always used 'em without problems. I don't recall ever having a seal at the back of the hub pop out as a results of greasing. I'll stand corrected, but I guess at least if you're pumping grease in you're also forcing any water out. 

Grease choice is pretty important; Ive always used the Belray. It would make for a good Youtube to compare BB's with normal caps. 

I have taped and drilled the hub out and put a grease nipple in and fill from the middle of the hub ,every bearing that i have seen failed is because the grease doesn't get to the rear bearing and that is the one that fails first.
Put a small strip of galvanized metal strap from one stud too one of the other studs ,too holed the cap on and put a small (very small) hole in the cap to relieve the pressure when filling,old grease will come out as a squiggly worm until you see knew grease.Fill slowly so as not to blow any seals out at rear of the hub.

 Firstly, "issues"--I'm starting to hate the misuse of that word----IF you use them as intended, AND use them with proper marine seals, theree are no "ISSUES". Let's just go through it

1. Plain seals are not for use with bbb's. They are meant for use with marine seals. Use a plain seal, you can and will have problems. Including "popped seals"
2. People don't fit the rubber caps supplied. Apart from keeping them clean on the outside, which is purely cosmetic, they absolutely stop any possible water ingress from the front, due to the sealing effect of all that grease. The amount of effort you need to pop the vacuum to get them off will attest to that.
3. I used to lose them on corrugations, too. I would actually change to caps for corrugated roads--Ningaloo station track, anyone?  Shit, I used to lose plain caps on that track. Until I was put on to the simple need to dimple them. Just do that to your bb's, and it will never happen again. Mine stay on full time. 
4. The rear bearing will fail first due to water ingress. So stop the water ingress.
5. You stop the water ingress by using a proper marine seal AND KEEPING THE GREASE UP TO IT. Sorry for shouty caps, just had to. YOU CANNOT "OVERGREASE" YOUR BEARINGS. Sorry again. OK, if you are pumping so much in it is covering your dics, yes, you've gone too far. See below.
6. The marine seals are dual lip running inside a stainless cup, right? They NEED grease in that cup, and past those lips, to work. They RELY on having grease filling that cup to work.  You should be seeing a little grease coming, out. If not, you are not greasing often or hard enough. See above about overgreasing 

I used to share a boat with another bloke. 16ft tinny, single axle, basic rig. We were clueless, used standard seals. He used it all summer, I'd start in autumn. First thing I'd check was bearings. yep, F**ked. Every time.  The use was always very short runs to the local ramp. It had bb's, he swore he greased them, but it was always the rears stuffed from water ingress. Just a few years ago, I did a bearing change, and somehow ended up with one standard seal and 3 marine seals. Kalbarri on a weekend, you aren't popping down to the shop to get the right one. Pulled them 12 months later for inspection, the one with the standard seal was stuffed, water ingress on the inner,  bearings with marine seals were fine, as you'd expect.

As to type of grease, well, there are two schools of thought, niether are wrong. For a lot of long runs, and I don't mean the bloke who goes north once a year, the high temp grease may be best. I personally use the Castrol green stuff, but am on the fence with my useage. In the last year, I've dragged the Reefrunner to the Monties, Exmouth (  3 times) , Shark Bay, and I'm running on Ford Slimlines on 1500kg axles. Bit marginal, IMO, they run warmish at the best of times, so I am still tossing up whether or not to go to HTB. I actually use a little IR temp gun to check, they are usually just under or around 40c in ambient 30c. I  contrast the big bearings on my single axle trailer grossing a bit over 1500kg run under 30c in ambient high 20's.

just saw these replies..,

excellent info. will definitely keep this in mind. i ended up picking up some of the castrol grease and a gun and will be applying regulalry. hopefully get into good habbits early.

aprreciate the info guys!