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Old 06-11-2002, 02:19 AM
tcane tcane is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: San Antone
Posts: 408
I've cleaned and re-packed with grease many 1,000's of bearings of all kinds including a fair number of wheel bearings. Very good comments/suggestions by the other members about cleaning in solvent, not drying by spinning the bearing with compressed air (drying with compressed air is OK so long as the bearing is not allowed to spin - and compressed air should remove any remaining crud/grit), and re-packing by putting a glob of grease in your palm and filling the bearing with grease ( a bit of a mess that can be lessened by wearing surgical/vinyl examination gloves).

I would add that you want to use a wheel bearing grease with a melt temperature in excess of 450 degrees F (high melt temp prevents liquifying causing the grease to flow out of the bearing and subsequent loss of lubrication and some greases with melt temps below 450 but good enough to use will have some liquification that will cause a mess on your wheels/tires/other front end parts close to the wheel).

And, look to see if the grease has a specific gravity of greater than 1.0 so that water will not displace the grease causing the loss of lubrication and bearing damage. Instead of giving a specific gravity spec., the grease may say it is not displaced by water.

Do you have the info on how to adjust the front wheel bearings after installing them?

Good Luck!
Tom
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