Several years ago I had bearing disintegrate. Not fun, since the spindle was damaged - but it gave me a lot of time to get acquainted with trailer axle assemblies. I came to use the part names shown in the diagram below, from a Lippert service manual.
The spindle is the end of the axle - the part the pokes into and through the hub. The hub is the cylindrical part that accepts the spindle. For the Lippert products we are talking about, the hub assembly (as opposed to the hub itself) include the hub, the wheel mounting studs, the brake drum, and magnet track. The hub assembly slides onto the spindle and then over the brake assembly. The brake assembly includes the shoes, the magnets, the actuators, and assorted other parts, all mounted on a backing plate (shown but not labeled). By removing four bolts - you can see the heads of two of them in the picture - you can remove the entire brake assembly. At that point, you can mess around with new shoes and new magnets and all the assembly work and adjustments that go with them. Or you can simply buy a new backing plate with everything already mounted and adjusted, and bolt it in place with the same 4 bolts. Even better, in the case of TM brake assembly, you can ditch the original manual-adjust brakes and buy a brake assembly with self-adjusting brakes.
Bottom line - for these pre-assembled units from Lippert, the term "hub" is pretty much interchangeable with "hub assembly.
Bill
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