Quote:
Originally Posted by sosidge
I prefer to leave them with the standard grease.
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But what is the standard grease?
I imagine rubber sealed bearings (which all mine are) would use something that would not attack the rubber seals. e.g. silicone based.
Or is a lithium based grease which tends to be used in 1:1 cars and machine bearings?
Some new blue seal ABEC-3 kits I got from "hobbybearingstore" on ebay seamed to be lubed with a silicone looking grease when I removed the seal on a new one.
Other bearings I've seen for sale on the Internet, mostly metal shielded seem to be listed as lubricated with a light machine oil.
I've been leaving them, but wheel bearings do tend to get packed up with crud, and not much clean stock lube left. When you wash out the crud, you wash out the original lube, but in most cases have a perfectly functioning bearing once it lubed up again. I did have an AE kit bearing break a ball recently, which sounded rough. I removed the rubber seal, and washed out lots of crud and a piece of a ball bearing. I replaced it, but the bearing had been left with stock lube, and was only 3 months old. I imagine if I'd cleaned and lubed this earlier, it would have lasted longer.