Technical Is it possible to overgrease a bearing?

And that excess heat causes the grease to degrade quicker which leads to failure. As I said earlier I don’t thing it’s much of a problem for anything we deal with but is a problem in some applications


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5 yrs use-

You know I did a little math and applied it to my yard and mowing....
And here’s what I came up with-

If I could mow without overlap (ya can’t) and could mow without covering any ground twice (also ya can’t) then subtracting the pavement buildings and pond that don’t need mowed then I need to ride the 46” deck tractor for 12 miles every mow. 12 freaking miles.

So one mans use in 5 yrs is different than another. But I’m glad to know they had the seals out of the insides

 

Not to mention the dirty hands in that video just add contaminants and grit to the grease. Isn't one of the reasons for re-greasing to eliminate that kind of crap?

I rarely wear nitrile/latex gloves when I'm working in the shop, but I do when I'm greasing bearings.

 

A sealed bearing if you over grease it the seal will pop out. Then if you don’t re grease again containments get in as grease goes away.

 

This is a great post . I have as most HAMBers have greased hundreds if not thousands of bearings . On well built electric motors there was a plug to remove opposite of the zerk to verify grease and a sign when to stop greasing the bearing . On my OT it has full float rear axle bearings , these must be greased by hand when installing and housing oil flushes out the grease to lube the bearings . The Dana 60 uses a different cover front and rear to control fill level also . Front is about 3/4 in lower than rear axle . I pack my wheel bearings by hand the old school way . I fill the hub up to the race level with grease and install the bearing and seal . I tighten the nut hand tight , to seat the bearings ,spin the hub . Back off the bearing then retighten until there is not felt play , install the cotter pin or lock nut . I was always told ball bearings require free play roller bearings no free play . Im not sure if this is correct or not , but I am sure roller bearings are correctly adjusted when at operating temps . I don’t do this myself correctly . I think if you use your head for a brain and not a hat rack , as I sometimes tend to do , you will not have any issues .

 

Today I was changing the tires on my wifes OT jeep Cherokee. and was thinking theres not a grease fitting on the entire vehicle and it has way over 200,000 miles on it and nothing like ball joints or u joints ever replaced. Now I did have to replace the rear axle bearings with heavier caged bearings from NAPA. however when its likely to rain I often haul 500 pounds of feed in the back.

 

I am mowing a little over 2 acres, not including the trimming, but I am too lazy to do the math right now.
One thing a person could take from my experience, is that with good care, a person can reasonably anticipate that the bearings should last five years without problems.
Bob

 

Damnit 31Vicky, now I’m curious, I mow around five acres. Probably surprising how many miles.


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I gotta tell you, I was surprised as well, and doing the calculation the lazy way, (doubling 31 Vicky's calculation), that means I mow 24 miles, and that makes sense, considering the amount of time it takes.
Bob

 

Long trip we were getting dry !

 

I mow very little. I hate mowing grass just for looks. I let the cow's and sheep graze it off. and my little grandsons keep a lot of it worn to bare dirt. besides you would die of shrapnel from stuff hidden in the deep weeds. I do have plenty of mowers. A gravely. a Super A farmall with a 59 inch woods belly mower. a 301 JD with a mid mount hyd lift sickle bar mower. several brush hogs. A half dozen riding mowers. I cant keep a push mower going. I hit the aforementioned shrapnel and bend the crankshafts. I even have several of those antique push type reel mowers. mowing for astetic's never puts nickles in my pocket. Its cost time & money.

 

My car trailer has greasable bearings and I have noticed that grease flings out from under the dust caps onto the wheels. I wonder if I have over greased it? I have tried tapping the caps to make sure they are tight, and replacing the rubber caps over the zikrs.

 

Yes, you probably have over greased them. Those grease zirks fitted to wheel bearing dust caps are a terrible idea and serve no positive function, except possibly on boat trailers, but I'm not sure about that either.

 

Aha! Fun place, isn’t it? We stumbled onto it a couple of years ago, completely by accident during the festival! Luckily we found a room at a motel right down town. I remember arriving and leaving two days later.......lol.





Bones

 

Those boat trailer caps have a spring loaded slide it them, most are plastic see through. The theory behind them is you pump them up to compress the spring, then the spring keeps constant pressure on the seal. This ensures that water won’t get into the bearing when submerged. Works... most of the time......kinda.
It’s the same theory that Ford had on their ball joints, back in the fifties, and most ball joints still today. They have a rubber seal around them that you watch while greasing to see if it expands a little. This then keeps pressure on the grease to make it get into where it does some good! Excellent design, untill some Bozo gets an air powered grease gun an blows the rubber seal! On our 53 Ford my Dad showed this to me back in the fifties. He would grease the tie rods and poke the ball joint seals with his finger, if they were spongy, they got no grease. Many ball joint seals are ruined everyday, by uninformed grease monkeys.




Bones .

 

Ok heres sumthin many may not have ever seen. the grease fitting has a threaded cap you fill the cap with grease and screw it down to force the grease into the bearing or whatever needs lubed. The one pictured is from a squirrel cage fan it is the smallest of this type ive ever seen. most are quite a bit larger .

 

The water pumps on H &M Farmall tractors have a grease fitting. However they also have a relief valve. you pump until grease start to come from that valve. your supposed to use a special type grease. I just use regular chassis lube.

 

What kind of time based interval is recommended for repack and adjust front wheel bearings? Mileage might be spec'd at say each 8,000 miles, but a lot of people don't drive their hotrods as daily drivers so mileage doesn't really apply.

In the .mil we repacked them every 6 months. That's not necessary for hotrods either. Somewhere between the extremes of complete neglect and OCD is probably the sweet spot, but I'm not sure what that is.

 

come spring time, i'm going to try this....
https://negearpolishing.com/news/sif-low-drag-seals-rem-finished-bearing-kits-are-now-available
no grease, just a little dab on the bearings will do.
they do the rem finish on my buick engine parts on the dragster

 

Well..... I’m going to chime in and say I TRY to repack my bearings every brake job on my older vehicles. Trailers.....usually before a long trip.... if I haven’t packed them recently. Daily driver.... when they fail....due to their design.




Bones

 

I repack them when they fail. as much stuff as I have if I attempted to do regular maintance . That's all I would have time for. My wifes car gets oil changed every 5000 miles. My stuff that I use gets the oil changed once or twice a year. some engines that aren't used much get only the oil filter change once a year. I grease things when I change oil. my hay bailer gets greased every time I use it.

 

Just this year I finally found a woods belly mower for my Super A Farmall. when I was installing it I noticed the mower attachment cross bar was going to cover the lube & fill plugs on the final drives. I pulled the bottom pans and cleaned them and reinstalled and refilled with gear oil. I never intend on ever messing with them again. I suspect the gear oil in them was put in in the 1940,s when the tractorwas new. Ought to be good for another 70 some years

 

While we are on spindles, I want to add some information I learned years ago. We had tractors breaking spindles, due to us overloading them. They are built just like a car spindle only larger. It was cheaper to have our local machinist make a new spindle, than buy a new one, so that’s what we did. Since he was making it, I thought I might increase the size to make it stronger.
What I found out was that any certain race will accept many different bearings! Some with smaller or larger I D, some with more rollers( more capacity) and some with a lager radius where the bearing meets the shoulder.
So if you are trying to adapt some hub to a different spindle, you are not limited to the bearing that the “ book “ shows.
I obtained a “Dimension and Specifcations” book from my bearing house to increase the spindle diameter from 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 and increase the radius. Made the spindle considerably stronger.
Just thought I would pass this information along, maybe it will help someone.





Bones

 

Sorry, but I'd be requesting more technical information on that. FYI, there is zero contact between the rollers and the races of a rolling element bearing. The rollers and races are kept seperated by a process known as "Elasto-hydrodynamic lubrication", in which the surfaces of the rollers and the races elastically deform under pressure of the lubricant trapped between them, which prevents any contact at all between the elements. How does the polishing that they advertise change that? Maybe this is a legit process, but it reeks of snake oil sales to me. The bearing industry has been at this game for over a century, they've spent millions of dollars on research and development, and we're supposed to believe this small company has outsmarted all the engineers in the industry? Maybe. Doubtful. Let's see the technical info, the patents, the white papers. Some one once said, a fool and his money are soon parted.

 

Bearings are also available in different quality levels, depending on the severity of the application and the requirements. I had to do a post failure analysis of bearings from a shaker screen at a quarry once, (used to separate rocks & gravel by size); one of the things I uncovered in my examination was the bearing used by the customer was a less expensive bearing than called for in the application. The purchasing guy for the quarry bought "will - fit" bearings, bearings that are the same size as OE, just not of sufficient quality material. That was not the only issue that lead to the failure, the shaft was also bent, which the resulting wobble left wear marks in the races as evidence. The bearings may have lived if they were up to OE standards, maybe not.

 

My old Bellsaw one man sawmill has Babbitt bearings on the saw mandrel. Lots of times know it all's have told me I need pillow blocks. I tell them most gasoline and diesel engines have Babbitt bearings. a ball bearing in a pillow block on a saw mandrell chatters and just don't work. You need a high dollar roller bearing that has two tapered rollers for a saw. I will just keep the Babbitt.

 

blues4u,
being an old r&d/experimental guy, within reason and I feel comfortable about it, I will try it. what do we do for lube for ceramic bearings?
fwiw, I don't use a oil filter on my dragster/buick, no room. lol