Relubing wheel bearings, was Re: rear wheel bearings help

[Bernie Benz]

Alan,

As you know, the design of this cartridge bearing is such that, when  
pushing the hub out of the bearing housing, the bearing is  
disassembled, the outside inner race remaining on the hub and  
separating from the outer race of balls. The interference preventing  
this separation is very small, not enough to damage working race  
areas nor the outer row of balls. Likewise, the inside inner race may  
now be pushed from the bearing cartridge, separating it from its  
inner row of balls. The bearing seals likewise will remain undamaged.

Inasmuch as the bearing failure area will be a small roughened  
“Brinelled” surface of the fixed outer ball race on the top side  
(never seen it on the equally loaded inner race bottom side surface),  
one can wipe clean and inspect these fixed race areas. And notice  
that the remaining grease is hard and not in contact with the balls  
nor their races. If one is very careful not to introduce dirt one can  
just add additional grease, BTDT. If gilding the lily, one might  
remove and solvent wash all bearing parts before regreasing and  
reassembling the cartridge.

See my previous post, “Wheel Bearing Postmortem“ herein forwarded for  
more insite.

Bernie

On Dec 22, 2007, at 7:31 PM, <alancordeiro at att.net>  
<alancordeiro at att.net> wrote:

> O.K. Bernie, I'll bite, how did you relubricate the bearings? (I  
> lost the first at 160k,
> the second at 200k and the third at 245k. I changed the last one at  
> the same time,
> since I could not figure out how to grease it without removing the  
> spindle from the hub.
> Since I gave it to the machine shop to press out..it made sense to  
> give them a new
> bearing to press in at the same time, and be done with all of them.)
>
> Alan
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bernie Benz" <b.benz at charter.net>
> To: <PeterBergin at aol.com>
> Cc: "200q20V mailing list" <200q20v at audifans.com>
> Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2007 5:53 PM
> Subject: Re: rear wheel bearings help
>
>
>> So, did I guess correctly, are they the same bearing as used in the
>> front?
>>
>> IME with fronts, a factory lubed bearing is planned for a life of
>> 100K to 200K. A properly relubed bearing will last an additional 300
>> to 400K.
>>
>> Merry Christmas!
>>
>> Bernie
>>
>>
>> On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:29 PM, PeterBergin at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>>