PHOTOS: ANDREW FREDRICKSON
PHOTOS: ANDREW FREDRICKSON
ven on a brand-new bike, the grease that comes in most wheel bearings is fairly weak, so it’s best to take your seals out, remove the bearings, and put in some really good race grease—something that’s going to last. You should see quite a bit more life out of your bearings if you take the extra time and do it from the beginning. As those bearings heat up, the grease can go where it needs to be, making your wheels turn a little bit smoother.
First, remove your wheel spacers. Pretty simple: just take them out from each side using either a punch or a screwdriver—something you can use to lightly remove the spacers. Next, remove the seal either with a flat blade or, if you have one, a seal puller. Remove the seal from the hub itself.
Move the inner sleeve to the side. You’ll have to tap it over with a punch. They’re in line with the bearing, meaning you won’t be able to get onto the bearing with the sleeve directly in line with the bearing. So tap the sleeve over. Once the sleeve is tapped over, you can see the edge of the bearing. Remove it.
Add a little bit of heat to the hub around the bearing on the outside—use a regular small torch with MAPP gas. You don’t have to heat it a lot. Aluminum expands very rapidly, so light heat for maybe thirty seconds. This will allow the bearing to come out a lot more easily. Flip the wheel over to tap the bearing downward and out, then simply do the opposite on the other side. Next we’ll remove the bearing and sleeve.
First, clean the sleeve. Once that’s done, I like to do one little tech tip—kind of a “factory” thing. Take a little file and file a small groove into the sleeve. That makes it easier the next time you want to service your wheel bearings to be able to get the punch onto the bearing without having to smash the sleeve over to the side or pound it over. Sometimes they stick, so it’s really, really difficult to get them to move. By adding that groove, you can actually get the punch directly onto the bearing.
Next, remove the seal from the bearing itself. Once both sides of the bearing seals are off, inspect the bearing and clean it in a solvent tank. Once all the old grease and dirt and debris are gone, I like to go through and spray the bearing down with contact cleaner to really clean it out and get all the solvent out of it.
After drying the bearing, it’s time to re-grease. I like to do a small amount on both sides. You don’t want to pack it extremely tight—‚that will actually cause more drag—so just put sufficient grease on both sides.
Reinstall the bearing seal. It will be a lot smaller than the wheel hub seal. Now you’re ready to go back in with your bearings.
I like to put a small amount of grease in the hub itself; that allows the bearing to slide down into the hub a lot more easily. Then, reheat the hub by applying the torch around where the bearing is going to go to once again expand the aluminum. When you’re reinstalling the bearing, use caution to make sure the bearing goes down in straight. You don’t want to get it in there crooked. If it starts to go crooked, hit the high side. If it goes in crooked, it will bind and you could actually break your hub. Just nice and straight.
Reinstall the sleeve, and then the bearing on the other side, again using heat. Then reinstall the two seals for the hub.
Once your two seals are installed, put a little grease on the seal in the wheel spacer, then slide the wheel spacers back in.
If you maintain your wheel bearings like this, you’ll get a lot more life out of them. Good luck! 
