best way to clean and repack bearings?

[ae6black]

What is the best way to clean and repack bearings? I am pretty sure I do this the wrong way although I've been doing this for 40 years or so. My practice has been to swhish the dirty bearings in a container holding a little bit of gasoline and slosh them around until all traces of dirt and old grease are gone. Then I've let them dry out and then simply repacked them in my hands by forcing the grease into the bearings until it comes out all over. I've never had a dry bearing doing this but have often had trouble with bearings getting wet when the seals failed. What is the best way, particularly on how to prepare a bearing for packing with new grease? I've heard they've got a tool of some sort out there but hand method has always worked for me. It's the getting the thing clean enough to start with that has me confused.



Art

[booyah]

swap gasoline for carb cleaner and thats how I do it.

[KennethW]

swap gasoline for carb cleaner and thats how I do it.

With carb cleaner WEAR gloves. it will harm your skin. The biggest cause of bearing failing is being to tight and not packing the grease thru the bearing. If you want to save the seal drive it out with the bearing race. That way you don't bend the seal.

[QueticoBill]

A lot of you tubes on this, and quite a few for boat trailers, which seem akin to TNTTT. It seemed about half of the ones I looked at recommended replacing the seal when you repack as a matter of course. I figure I probably will when I repack my new NT trailer bearings.

[les45]

I use mineral spirits (while wearing nitrile gloves). I also pack by hand and just make sure that the grease is pushed into every little opening. I always use new seals when I re-pack my bearings as I've had some leak on me when I've tried to re-use them in the past. Getting the proper tightness when re-assembling is also important. There should be no lateral movement of the hub but it should still spin fairly freely. There will be some slight resistance due to the friction of the new grease. I grease the areas of the bearings liberally but I don't pack the entire center of the hub and I don't use Buddy Bearings or grease guns to add grease between re-packings. When towing, I keep a complete spare hub assembly in my trailer tool box. I figure it will be a lot easier to simply replace a greased hub assembly than to deal with the mess of replacing bearings or races while sitting on the side of the road. A complete hub assembly is surprisingly inexpensive compared to buying new bearing sets.

[dancam]

Interesting. I have never cleaned them. I use a bearing packer tool which forces the old grease out with new grease. Once clean grease is coming out i pack it by hand to make sure its greased good.
Seems to be only 4 things that cause the bearings to fail:
-never regreasing them
- seals leaking
-over/undertightening
-excess brake heat cooking the grease.
-dust caps falling off and it fills with water or dirt.

So i buy a stack of seals at once online very cheaply and use new seals every time.
Also check, recheck and check again the tightness in the first 100km or so.
Make sure the dust caps are in good shape. Any damage or corrosion use new or good ones. Their cheaper and easier to replace than bearings.


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[Tomterrific]

Those bearing buddy's are not for adding grease but to keep positive pressure in the hub to keep out water. A boat trailer is towed to the lake where it is imeadiately backed into the water. The warm hubs cool and the internal pressure drops fast pulling in water. Trailer is towed home where it sits for a week and then it happens again. The bearing buddy has a spring loaded plate/piston that keeps pressure in the bearing to keep out the water.

Tom, ex marine mechanic for a while in the 70's.

[swoody126]

there is a plethora of information on this process on the infamous interweb...

i found a guy who shows how i grease bearings by hand

only takes minutes and not worth the expense of buying a packer

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=rep ... &FORM=VIRE

NITRILE GLOVES!!! knot latex

i have gone to waterproof grease, the blue/green stuff, for all 3 of my grease guns, shop, boat trailer & farm implements

it is a step up but not cost prohibitive by any means(the difference wont prevent you eating @ THE GOLDEN ARCH CLUB)

i have also begun(almost finished) changing all my dust caps to the BEARING BUDDY system so i don't have to remove the hubs each time they are due for service

once you have done a thorough service and installed the new caps you will rarely need to pull the hubs for service, just jack the tire off the ground and spin it listening for any gravely grinding like noises

if spinning the tire sounds smooth, just inject grease thru the nipple until the plunger moves outward nearly to the edge of the cap and move on to the next tire/wheel

over greasing using this system tends to force a bit of grease out the back/seal and does not necessarily mean the seal is damaged

i use this method on all my trailers, RV, utility, farm & boat and have one trailer that went over 20 years w/o needing to repace the bearings and it was subjected to fresh & salt water launchings, regularly

if you do go this route on a boat trailer make sure you lube the BUDDIES at the ramp just before launching, in addition to the beginning of longer trips which fills the hub and really helps prevent water intrusion

for your other trailers annual greasing is usually adequate

as for your question about cleaning, there are as many schools of thought as there are trailers...

some say gasoline leaves a film that prevents the grease from contacting the metal bearing surfaces

we know carb &/or brake cleaners will make your babies be born'd nekkid, toofless & bald head'd if you get it on your skin

most professional shops use a parts cleaner vat w/ solvent running out of a tube to rinse the parts, bearings & hubs, thoroughly

Varsol is another solvent that has traditionally been used for bearing cleaning

mineral spirits does work, is less unfriendly to the users and can be had just about anywhere

over the years i've used all of the cleaning methods i mentioned and have not had any known issues with any of them

¿ did i say NITRILE GLOVES ?

work in a well ventilated area

wear safety glasses during the cleaning process

extreme care should be taken when disposing of rags & paper towels

hope this hasn't muddied the issue too much

sw