Wednesday, Jun 29, 2005 at 23:27
One more thing I thought of, to save you the hard lesson...
Way back on Tip #4, the hard lesson travelling with spare bearings: Per my Library
A few of you buy a spare bearing set from us to pack away in the van.. No, I do not think this is necessarily something you should do, maybe a dustcap or two, but bearing sets spares are for the mentally obsessive like me.... Now if you are among us crazies, you need to take apart the bearing set and pack it in grease, solid and sloppy with wheel bearing grease and then put it in a zip-lock... And for you good people that are travelling with them now, open them up and inspect them, pack them in the same grease..... Yea, you better.... Here's why:
The problem (discovered) is that travel on the corrugation with the micro-vibration actually chatters dry bearing sets from the tapered bearing thru the hard facing on the race... In common slang, the cup and cone, the bearing contact surface chattering and vibrating on the corrugation actually scores and then eats through the hard facing on the bearing race, and your new bearings are ******* (not that word, I was thinking stuffed), before you get a chance to use them... Put into use they would not last a few thousand kms. Soooooo, pack them in grease to freeze them up... Trust me it happens, I lost a few sets that way... The hard sticky grease freezes them up enough, have not lost any sets since... If you are worried, hold up the flat surface in the light and look for perpendicular stripes in the polished hard faced surface... If they are there, wipe it again, if they are still there, oops.... It is still probably better than nothing, but the scuffed surface will grossly shorten the bearing life... Unless it is your last crumpet, give it the toss and get a new one... This time pack it in grease to stop the movement...
Dust caps are another issue... If you are one of the lucky dip 1 in 20 to 1 in 50 vans, for some reason they spit a dust cap or two when new... And even now and then on others.. Now we clean the dust cap and put some Sika-Flex sealant, a dab every inch or so around the dust cap to freeze it in place... The current theory (besides a poor fit or rock hit or the bad luck fairies...) is that some bearing hubs have more grease or gas expansion, and the high grade seals do not let out the heat expansion fast enough and it blows off the dust cap in the rare case when it fits too well to allow gas to escape... The partial Sika application allows some gaseous expansion. Anyway, if you want to be obsessive, a dust cap is hard to get in that size in the bush... Bearings, no problem, but a dust cap.....
Anyways,
From da Ranger, tryin ta look after ya!!!
AnswerID:
566606
