getting ready to do my sons novas front wheel bearings. new hub, and replacing both sets of bearings, my question is the grease. I use a wheel bearing packer. and I fill the hub cavity about 1/2 full of grease. I work in a diesel shop and have watched trained mech use some of the weakes looking light blue grease. and just grease the bearings themselves. I use the thick blue syn grease and lots of it . am I wrong I will still probably do it the same way but is there a better way?
The owner of a chain of bearing stores told me to imagine wading thru deep water. I said, "Yeah??" He said thats what its like if you use too much grease. He claimed it can make the bearing run hot. I dunno, I still pack mine. I know that a tapered roller bearing should have pre-load when you tighten the nut.
I only pack the bearings themselves and maybe a thin coat inside the hub. My father is a machinist who builds a lot of assembly plant machines. He was working at a plant and the plant manager threw a fit and tossed his brand new bearing in the trash because he used too much grease. He claimed it would overheat the bearing and cause the machine to be shut down for more repair work.
I only put enough grease in the hub to coat the metal so it does not corrode and pack the bearings by hand. Been doing it that way for fifty years.
Heat the grease till its liquid and put the bearing in a can thats just big enough for it, then pour the warm grease on it to cover. Let it cool and install the bearing. Highway haulers use good seals and engine oil in the wheel bearings, no grease. It won't stay in car hubs though, and no way to check or fill them.
yep...agree never worried about "to much grease" on the front wheel bearings , i think if you load them up to heavy and waste the grease by sloping it on the spindle it squishes out when you lpre load the bearing and ends either in the center of the hub between the front and rear bearing or ends up on your wrench on the nut side..
When applying grease the bearing should be filled completely and the hub should only be partially filled. This leaves a place for the grease to go when when the moving part starts rotating. When I put new wheel bearings in my motor home I referred to a cutaway diagram of the hub assembly that I found online showing exactly how much grease to put in the hub. Lucas Red 'N' Tacky.
I just finished cleaning out the excess grease that got past the stuffed seal on my latest car. There was so much in the brakes that I effectively had only rears working. (I'm talking like a cupful of grease on the shoes). So, yeah, only enough grease required to the keep the bearing lubed.
In my business, I saw many many bearing wasted due to lack of grease, rarely saw a bad bearing with too much grease! Just my experiences. Bones
I pack bearings with a bearing packer then by hand to coat the outside and fill the hub 1/2 way with grease . Never understood why I was packing the hubs with grease and never got a clear cut answer when I worked in automotive. when I switched to forklift repair it all made sense . a lot of warehouse forklift use poly wheels bonded onto a steel hub . if you don’t pack the hub with grease the bearings will over heat and actually deboned the poly from the hub . the grease in the hub acts like a heat sink and pulls excess heat out of the bearing . I’ve seen mast rollers and bearings in sealed locations fail from over greasing , but if the grease has a place to go I will always put more grease then less. there is always an excessive amount of grease , use your heads you grease bags !
Any extra grease that's not actually lubricating the bearing is just holding heat in . What benefit is a wad of grease in the middle of the hub ? Its not going to flow into a bearing that needs grease . I did some testing with the factory on lift trucks years ago that use small load wheels that would over heat . They had grease fitting that would pump the entire wheel full and ever service more grease would be added . We hand packed the wheels with various brand greases on one side and removed the zerk fitting and kept the other side the same . The hand pack and left alone wheels lasted twice as long some three times as long . this was with a roller bearing but I doubt a cone type auto bearing is any different as far as extra grease doing anything good I hand pack them with the plamy of my hand so grease pushes trough and then I coat the outside and add a dab on the race and put it together . grease the lip of the seal Thats how I was taught in HS , by my grand father who had a shop , and how a bearing manufacture ( Timken rep ) told us to do in college in 1980 if we did not use a cone set up were you don't use your hands . they said the same thing extra grease does not lubricate any thing and only holds heat in . Its how I have done every bearing in my profession, and I have never had a problem .
I pack the bearings by hand , usually, then add grease to the outside of the bearing, then I add some in the the cap. Just habit! But I do it! Bones
Pack the bearing full, either by hand or a packer. Smear a light coat on the outside of bearings. Add grease to hubs inside and races, just a nice 1/8" thick coat to keep the rust at bay and should the grease seal fail and moisture make it inside to protect any metal. After 44 yrs in the business, I've never had a problem doing it this way and all the cars I've owned and did this way never ever replaced a bearing. .
I hand pack each bearing very liberally,and then cover completely in grease, very liberally coat the races, and make sure there is grease in the center, and then assemble. In 35 years I have never replaced a bearing, or had grease get on my brakes
How many people have ever seen the inner bearing go bad? I don’t think I have ever seen that, the few wheel bearings I have seen go bad were only the outer bearing. Like the one that just did on my 65 wagon, but that was due to improper adjustment, I think, because there was grease there! Bones
Interesting topic. I also worked in the auto/truck/equipment repair field and have always [50+ years] hand packed the bearings put a tablespoon of extra grease in the hub and snugged up the roller bearings. On ball bearings I'd snug them up until I felt resistance and loosened up the nut to the next. I found if I got the ball bearings too tight, they'd self destruct..........think Pontiac front wheel bearings.
Grease that isn't actually on the bearing will never move to the bearing and does nothing. It might help keep water out on boat trailer bearings but otherwise all that grease you fill the hub with is never going to get to the bearing to keep it greased. That dust cap you faithfully fill with grease will still be full of grease except for where the nut and spindle were 10,000 miles from now when you do it again. It isn't going to flow into the bearing except when you first force the cap on. One never wash a bearing in solvent unless you are pretty sure that it is bad and want to inspect it closer or have it a bit cleaner to take to the parts house. There is no way to dry them out and get the solvent out. This is probably the number one cause of wheel bearing failure outside of guys who just flat do not know how to pack a bearing. Or bearing that never get maintenance. When you push the new grease in with your hand or the packer it will push the old dirty grease (what's left of it) out where you can wipe it off. You should see the grease come out from around the rollers on the other side of the bearing.
The only grease that does any good is in the bearing any extra just ups the chance that it will make it past the seal and on to the brakes . Trailers without brakes I use those dust caps with a jerk. Some farm implements started turning the seal around to seal out dirt and you grease them until the grease comes out past the seal.
I'll add something ,trailer bearings , especially boat trailer bearings run millions of miles with hubs packed full of grease due to the expansive use of bearing buddies , these bearings deal with much higher loads than passenger vehicle front wheel bearings ! The bearings on my v boat trailer haven't been touched in 20 years with bearing buddies ( other than cleaning excess grease off the inside of the wheels )
Always hand packed, smeared on outside of the bearing and race. Light covering inside of the hub to prevent rust. The way I was taught on the farm, on the job and school. Farm implements, automobiles and marine. No problems after all of these years. Hopefully didn't just jinx myself.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I always wash and scrub all the grease out of a bearing before re packing it. Yes, you can get all the solvent out. I know you have done it your way for longer than I have, but my way has never caused an issue. What I look at on a bearing when it’s clean, is to determine if I want to pack it, or replace it. I look at each roller for a spot/pit or a heat mark, same as the race. I also want to see the “big end” of a tapered bearing when fully cleaned. I want that dull/etc look, I don’t want to see a shined surface on it. I use compressed air to blow out the solvent in spots, making sure the roller don’t spin dry. Yes, it takes time. When done, they sit in the direct sunlight and finish until they are warm to the touch, then pack them. Now this doesn’t work at a shop, or in the winter, all good. But I don’t have a “get them in, get them out shop” and if I needed to do a wheel bearing I January, it would be a new replacement, not just maintenance. Too cold for me to be “well it’s time “ I’ll wait till better weather
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