Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:51:01 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: rear wheel bearing question
In-Reply-To: <E754CF07-59F2-4772-BA00-5603E70E078D@shaw.ca>
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only sometimes.
obviously ..if it's say 20 degrees F and the van has driven 5 miles at
30mph ..
the grease won't be very liquid.
on the microscopic level though ..
I bet it is.
what does 'worn out grease' look like ?
I see old dirty looking grease now and then.
here's one anecdote of why I have a lot of faith in grease with wheel
bearings.
In the 70's I was in the desert in Utah ..
in my first van and VW .....a 56 Commercial Spitty..
and I heard my left front wheel brgs squeaking.
Took it apart...bearings all blue and overheated.
I robbed some old grease off the suspension where it had squeased out
from over-greasing the torsion bar tube pivots ..
smeared that in the blue-colored bearings.
Drove into St. George on a Sunday.
The owner is there at the VW dealer..he opens the part department.
Sells me a new gearing at the equivlant of about 8 gallons of gas at the
time.
I go out in the parking lot to install the new bearing.
the old 'ruined' one looks just fine ~!
I get my money back on the new brg..
and drove the 'ruined' one until I sold the van years later.
I believe in grease.
And I believe in having enough of it in there.
I asked one guy once if he thought dirt works it's way into bearings
..or dirt gets worked outward.
He said ..'oh defenitely...if there is dirt in there, it will try to get
into the races and balls'.
I said ..'that's funny ..
I believe the opposite .........that dirt gets pushed aside, and somehow
the grease gets to where it needs to be and does its job.
And there needs to be a good amount in there.
I'd say I put at least two golfballs worth of grease into the housing ..
after packing grease into the bearings pretty well. Maybe a bit more
than that....2.75 golfballs worth of high quality bearing grease.
I have read of several cases of people doing rear wheel bearings and the
job not lasting that long.
qualtiy of parts and workmanship is all I can imagine.
scott
On 4/20/2012 12:59 PM, Alistair Bell wrote:
> I've seen no evidence of semi liquid grease laying in the bottom of any bearing housing I've removed. Grease in the housing looks like it came fresh out of the gun, Grease right at the bearings looks worn out, but not the stuff around the spacer.
>
> So you think the housing warms up enough to make the grease flow?
>
>
> alistair
>
>
> On 2012-04-20, at 12:14 PM, Scott Daniel - Turbovans wrote:
>
>> The way I look at it that the grease gets semi-liquid as it warms up ..
>> so the bottom of the housing is say, an inch deep in semi-liquid grease
>> and it naturally is getting to the ball and roller bearings.
