<VV> Re: Opening a LM axle bearing and a Can of worms

Terry Kalp tkalp@cox.net
Wed Feb 16 04:09:12 EST 2005


Here is my recent experience:

Son of Black Tooth developed a noisy rear wheel bearing (crunchy) recently.
With a little free-time in the hobby shop I picked out the best pair of
Ultra LM rear hubs and pulled them apart for inspection and repacking.   The
second hub had been drilled and had a grease zerk installed. With all the
opinions bantered about on VV about this practice, I thought this might be a
good chance to check the theories out.

What I found on disassembly was:  a good quantity of fresh grease in the
center cavity . . . none of which even got close to the tapered bearings
which had a smattering of dried out grease left on them.  In this case not
enough grease had been put thru the zerk to be effective.  The only way of
making the zerk method work that I could see would be to clean the assembly
and put it back together without the seals.  Then you would need to count
the pumps of your grease gun required to pump grease until it started coming
out the bearings into the area that the seals normally occupied.   Once the
count was made then you would pull it all apart and replace the seals.  At
this point you have done the same work as repacking two rear wheel bearings.

Pulling the rear hubs apart was not that difficult.  I use the factory
tools, but others have used gear pullers and a small press to accomplish the
task.  It would not be difficult to create the two bolt jacks that the
factory uses to press the spindle out of the housing.  Has anyone else
pulled a grease zerk equipped rear hub apart? What did you find?

Terry Kalp



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