New Aussie invention is wheely smart

The Spartan Hub, from Queensland-based start-up Spartan Innovations, promises to make roadside strandings due to failed trailer wheel bearings a thing of the past.

Making its public debut at the 2023 Victorian Caravan, Camping & Touring Supershow (Melbourne Showgrounds, February 22 to 26), the ingenious new system is the brainchild of inventor, Alex Muzic, and engineer and business partner, Bill Seawright.

And while the pair are initially pushing into the RV and trailerboat industries, they are targeting commercial semi-trailers too.

Connected through a business networking agency and both based in and around Innisfail (Qld), Muzic first approached Seawright with his idea around three years ago. The pair have been working furiously ever since to breathe life into the product, which they say is unique in the global market.

Muzic has a background as a mechanic and in tyres, and has also run a design workshop for many years. Seawright, meanwhile, has a wealth of engineering experience across a variety of automotive fields: agriculture, mining, and RVs, among others.

The Spartan Hub is essentially a sealed and maintenance-free hub unit that attaches a trailer’s wheel to the axle. While its double seal arrangement ensures dirt and water are kept at bay from its pre-greased and pre-set bearings, if the unit ever does fail the wheel can be taken off in a flash by simply removing four bolts, and then replaced by a spare also fitted with a Spartan Hub.

It means there’s no greasy messing around with trying to repack new bearings by the side of the road, or getting going again when damage has already been inflicted upon the axle – damage that usually results in yet another failure.

“It’s a greasy, messy, job to replace wheel bearings,” Seawright told boatsales. “And once the axle is damaged, it’s damaged – there’s nothing to do but pull the whole axle out and get it repaired. But a lot of blokes won’t do that – they’ll put it back together and hope for the best, but it doesn’t last at all.”

The Spartan Hub, however, offers a neat, fuss-free solution.

“With the Spartan hub, even if it failed, you can still get up and go, because you can’t damage it to the point where the axle is damaged. And it’s just secured with four bolts – that’s the whole system. So you’re changing the whole unit, you’re not mucking around – put a new one on and the job’s done.”

The pair already have an Australian patent for their product and are currently working through the international patent process. Produced in China, they say the RV and trailerboat versions of the product are currently six months away from going on sale here in Australia, and that they’re presently finalising their distribution channels.

As for pricing, Spartan Innovations says its hub system isn’t much more than what you’d expect to pay for a standard hub arrangement, while the company offers different set-ups to accommodate different brake formats.

Seawright says the Spartan hub solves an age-old concern when towing trailers. “Wheel bearings are in the back of everyone’s mind,” he says. “Are they right? Are they going to make it? Our slogan is ‘Conquer every adventure’ – with these you’ll get there and come home again,” he says.

But while they’re focusing at first on caravans, camper trailers, and boat trailers, the pair understand full well the implications their product has for the commercial transport sector. “We’ve also done the design work for truck semi-trailers as well, which is virtually the exact same thing just on a bigger scale,” Seawright says. “We’ve shown it to a couple of truckies, and they’ve said, ‘Hell yeah!’”

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