Sorry to get your hopes up, but no trailer wrecks here, just a sticky situation coming home from rally-x yesterday. Let me preface this by saying that I keep my trailer in good shape - regular repack bearings, check wiring, adjust brakes, etc.
So coming home yesterday from rallyx, about halfway home on the highway I start to feel an occasional "tug" coming from the trailer. Pulled off to check things thinking I might have a flat. No flat, and nothing visibly wrong. The right rear braked axle hub was a bit warm, but nothing too bad. I had been braking on the highway, so figured maybe I had the controller sensitivity up too high, so turned it down to a lower setting and set off again. Didn't notice any additional tugging, but it was windy so was more worried abour traffic and stuff.
About 10 minutes later, trucking along around 70 and a truck flashes me. Wasn't sure what was up, nothing felt amiss. Then a minute or two later a van comes up next to me and the passenger was wildly pointing back at the trailer, so I pulled off at first opportunity (another mile or so) after slowing down quite a bit, and could definitely see some smoke from that side of the trailer in my rearview. Jumped out and clearly smoking and my controller was suddenly showing a error code for "short circuit," which it hadn't initially been doing. Looking at the back of the drum, the grommet going through it appeared to be melted and the wire had rubbed to bare, grounding on the metal (causing the error code). Unable to get to the wire easily and not too far from home (20 miles), I cut the wires and proceeded (cautiously) the rest of the way home with only my left-side brakes. Sunday evening so not much traffic. Occasionally i kept hearing some odd metallic noise from back there (since I turned the music down to listen), but my trailer fenders make a lot of noise on bumpy roads so didn't think much of it. Managed to get home, trailer felt fine other than being more careful slowing down wiht the brakes turned down. Figured I'd have to fix the wiring and put some new shoes on the brakes.
So today I jacked up the trailer and....damn, the entire hub assembly was VERY looose. Wheel still bolted up tight but the entire hub was moving around as if it had no bearings (again, bearings repacked maybe 2k miles ago). Unbolted the wheel and saw this....
drum literally cracked in half all the way around! Looking in, I could see the shoes were just bare metal, no pad material. These shoes are only a couple years old (and the ones on the other side look fine).
Took off the hub nut (still torqued correctly with the cotter pin in) and literally everything inside is trashed other than the outer bearing, which seemed to be in fine shape and was probably the only thing holding the hub remotely in place.
So looks like time for a new axle.....
Anyhow, not sure what order things happened....
1) the wire shorted, activating the single wheel brake but without enough electricity to give it full lockup power (no evidence the tires were ever locked up, they still look great), overheated everything massively as I continued to drive, and the heat eventually killed the shoes and caused the drum to crack. This is odd though, since the "short" warning on my controlller did not come on until the very end - and the controller is very visible when driving and I would have noticed since it's bright and it was night-time.
2) The drum itself cracked independently just from material flaw, too old, or whatever. Once that happened, things got out of alignment inside, causing heat, causing the grommet to melt and the wire insulation, causing the short, which THEN caused the error code.
3) something internal in the drum brack mechanism broke (retainer spring or something), causing the shoes to jam lightly against the drum lining, not enough to lock them but enough to overheat the friction material and wear it to nothing, and eventually the metal on metal caused the smoke and heat and etc.
4) the inner bearing seized and caused extreme heat, leating to the wire shorting, leading to the brake activating enough to do all the wear damage. I suspect this might be the case since the inner bearing was totally gone when I took it apart, so I suspect it caused the rest of the issues in a chain reaction.
So, IDK. Not that it matters at this point. I've towed many thousands of miles with this trailer and never had any issues (other than a couple flats), repack the bearings annually, etc. So this is mostly just a lesson that "just because everything seems marginally ok," doesn't mean it is. What is crazy is that once I cut the brake wire, I drove another 20+ miles at (actualy) highway speed limit, being cautious, and everything felt totally fine back there, even though it was totally NOT fine. Pretty crazy.
