<VV> Rear wheel bearing greasing options / observations

[Robert Coffin]

Terry Kalp wrote ;
 <Has anyone else
pulled a grease zerk equipped rear hub apart? What did you find?>

I have repaired several of the LM rear hubs that were done by others ,
drilling and tapping for fittings and them filling the cavity with grease
until it came out the seals. The units were not disassembled to do the
modifications.
It was done to perfectly good rear hubs as a "preventative" measure.
The cars were brought to me for lack of braking ability.
You can guess why - the grease expanded when the brakes warmed up the hubs
and coated everything in the rear brakes.
Upon disassembly , I also found steel chips which had worked their way into
the bearings and ruined them.
SO , what started out as a way to save a little time and $ turned out to be
a quite expensive re - repair.
The party - which shall go unnamed -that did the fitting installation, a
"well known" local Corvair repair shop , refused to make good on the repair
of their shoddy workmanship.
I would not recommend this "fix", even thought it is shown in the Corvair
Tech Guide, as there is no positive way to keep some chips out of the grease
cavity. And unless the cavity is totally filled with grease[ NOT NECESSARY]
,no new grease will get to the hub bearings.
If the rear hubs are PROPERLY rebuilt with the correct clearances, and the
correct amount of premium synthetic grease - like Mobil 1- is used , the
rear hubs should outlast the rest of the car...with no need for any grease
fittings, as appealing as they might seem to be....
I put a pipe plug in the holes , with Loctite, to keep anyone from being
tempted to "grease" the units when repair was completed.
Bob C