Nosewheels

The standard four inch nosewheel for the Cozys and Long-Ezs has been the Gerdes model A-1230.
Sadly this company is no longer around. Fortunately hundreds of these wheels still exist so the supply will not dry up anytime soon. When it does it should not be of any concern because Matco has a comparable wheel in production.

It was brought to our attention by Ken Miller that there is an issue with the bearing/bushing/axle assembly in these wheels not functioning properly and typically the wheel/bearings/bushings rotate as one around the Cozy 5/16" axle bolt or the Long-Ez 1/4" axle bolt. While not a good thing, this makes sense from a relative surface area viewpoint. It appears an attempt was made at preventing this in the case of the Cozy by making the two NG-1 bushings meet in the middle thereby locking them up if sufficient pressure was applied via the axle nut. Unfortunately the tolerances on these wheels varies enough that "one size fits all" does not work too well. You may have excessive slop in your bearings or you may have excessive pressure on your bearings but if you follow the common procedure of tightening up on the axel nut until it is firm then backing off one castellation of the nut before inserting the cotter key then you will have a new problem as the whole assembly will tend to rotate around the axle bolt rather than the bearings.

The cross section above shows the Gerdes wheel with the yellow NG-1 bushings in place and the green CG-NWS nose wheel spacer that prevents the assembly from spinning on the axle bolt. This precision spacer is provided with all of our custom Gerdes nosewheels and can be fitted to customer Gerdes and Matco nosewheels if the complete wheel with bolts and bearings is sent to us (minus tire).