Hi Bob,
Before I bead blasted the hubs, I soaked them in gasoline for about a
week. I removed all the grease. They were dry and clean. I then packed
the hubs with paper, and neatly cover the front and back openings with
duct tape. Then bead blasted and painted, and lastly removed the duct
tape and the paper stuffing.
They are as clean as I can get them I think. I will put a small amount
of grease inside the cavity just in case there is some dust left in
there and to protect against corrosion. I expect flakes from the rusting
cast iron might not be good.
Hmmm.... maybe that's where it came from. Someone said you should put
some grease inside the hub to protect against rusting and it got passed
around from person to person until the hub cavities were being filled
with gobs of grease and no one knew exactly why anymore...
Thanks for the tips.
Don Malling
Robert M. Lang wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The gobs of grease in the inside of the hub does basically nothing. You
> want to make sure that the bearings are greased completely by "pushing"
> the grease through _both ways_ and then slowly turning the bearing and
> pushing it through again. Once there are no voids in the grease, the
> bearing is packed - install it.
>
> A lot of amatuers put all sorts of grease in the space between the
> inner/outer bearings - a lot of old timers tell me this is a waste, but
> I'm not sure if its a waste of material, time or both.
>
> As pointed out in other posts, if you media blast the hub and repaint, you
> want to be extra careful to remove all the grease that was in the hub and
> you want to clean the part completely before you reinstall and pack the
> bearings. One small piece of crud in there will make your bearings "toast"
> in no time. If the crud is abrasive, the time to failure will be
> relatively short...
>
> rml
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