Reese Revolution Maintenance

[nylyon]

I have a 2011 30.5 BHLT with a Reese Revolution. I didn't realize that there's annual maintenance which needs to be performed for this pin box.

Recently, I bought a new tow vehicle, and when setting up my new Curt hitch, I noticed about a ¼" gap between the pin box mounting bracket and the turret. I contacted Reese and they recommended loosing up the 2 ¼" castle nut and lubricating the friction plate with white lithium grease.

When I lowered the turret, I immediately noticed that there were gouges on the friction plate, so I decided to order the Revolution 16K Maintenance kit which comes with new bearing, race, friction plate and nylon bushing.

Today my son and I removed the pinbox and took it apart. OMG, the bearing was a complete rust bucket, not a hint of grease anywhere. The bushing was noticeably thinner on one side than the other (probably where the gap came from) and overall things looked pretty worn.

I had never perfomed maintenance on this pin box, and I am sure glad I dug into this. If you have a Revolution and have not performed maintenance, you may want to spend some time to take things apart and lubricate them well. I am ashamed of myself for not thinking of maintaining this, and glad that I finally have.

[Shorty Cox]

I too have the Reese Revolution on my 2012 31.5 FBHS. The owners manual for the Reese Revolution states to service it yearly. When I ask the dealer service dept about the service, the guy looked at me odd and state he had never heard of such a thing. I attempted to take it apart once. Removed the 2 1/4 in nut, but could not get the two pieces to come apart to expose the bearing. How did you get it apart?

Shorty

[nylyon]

I removed the 6 mounting bolts holding the pin box to the trailer frame. This thing weighs about 150# so be sure that you have help! My son and I held the assembly as my wife removed the last 2 bolts. When it dropped, we were able to gently lower it to the ground.

Once it's removed, I removed the 2 ¼" nut put the assembly on the ground the way it would sit when mounted and was able to easily remove the top mount.

Getting it back installed is a bit of a task, I used screw drivers to catch the holes, then maneuvered the inbox back. It took me, my wife and 2 adult kids to get it back in.

Overall it took about an hour to perform the service, and so glad that I did.

When I just greased the turret, I loosened the nut (not remove) and rotated the turret back and forth while giggling it up and down. to reseat it, I did the same, constantly torquing the bolt.

[Shorty Cox]

Nylyon, thanks for the instruction. I had thought about removing it from the RV and getting it on the ground to separate the two parts. I will have to get the wife to do it!!!!

[DNelson]

Yesterday I decided to check the Reese Revolution hitch bearing, bushing and wear plate on our 2018 Eagle HT 28.5RSTS. I am glad I did because I found the bearing, bushing and wear plate were installed with no grease. I know these turn very slowly but putting them together with no grease is guaranteeing failure at some point in time.

I decided to disassemble the rotating parts in place rather than remove the entire pinbox as shown on the Reese Revolution YouTube video and recommended elsewhere. I just needed to find something around the house to support the pinbox after removing the 2 1/4 inch bearing nut. Standing nearby was the heavy duty plastic garbage container provided by a commercial garbage company. I opened the lid on the garbage container and put some 2x4s across it to separately support the front and back end.

I then loosened the bearing retaining nut about 1/2 inch and wiggled the rotating part of the pin box down to the nut. Next I lowered the RV front jacks unti the pin box weight was all on the 2x4s and finished removing the nut. All I had to then was raise the front jacks and the pinbox parts separated.

After cleaning everthing up I turned the wear plate over so the unused side would now be the wear surface. I used fine sandpaper to remove all the rust on the Revolution pin and sprayed it with WD-40 white lithium grease. I cleaned up the bearing and liberally coated it with the same grease. I also coated the pin bushing liberally with the lithium grease.

Putting it back together was simply reversing the RV jack procedure. After removing the 2x4s and garbage can I torqued the nut to 80 ft-lbs as recommended by Reese. The hex nut slots didn't allow installation of the cotter pin so I backed off the nut just enough to install the pin.

Doing the maintenance this way was less work and I didn't have to struggle lifting the heavy pinbox system.

Sorry for being so wordy but trust me the work is a lot easier than reading my long post. Also sorry for not taking photos of the process but I just didn't think of doing so until after I finished!

To get some idea of what the parts are like here is a link to a Reese Revolution maintenance video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlK55zu3f80

[Bearles]

I was caught with the same issue a couple years ago when the friction plate shifted. I also learned through Reese that there is required maintenance, my dealership also knew nothing of it.

I was able to use my tripod support on the king pin to hold the bulk of the weight of the hitch while I took the castle nut off. I found I had to wiggle the entire hitch a bit to get it to release from the mount. I then lowered it to the ground, holding it by. Both hands.

Completely dry, a sign was that rotating it by hand when mounted had become difficult. Now I always remove annually and grease the bearing with general purpose grease. Sad that most dealers don’t seem to know about this maintenance.

[bdreinv]

Whats the advantage of that hitch, we have old style? Nothing rotates on the fiver,only the hitch in the bed!

[DNelson]

bdreinv,

It moves the pivot point back about 22 inches so that with short bed trucks you can back in tight spots without the RV hitting the truck. I can go to 90 degrees with the 6ft 4in box on my 2015 Ram 2500. There are a number of YouTube video showing how it works.

[bdreinv]

Cool thanks for info!