I seem to recall that one workshop manual I read advised putting grease into the space between the inner and outer bearing on a front hub, and that was about it. I certainly feel that it is wrong to fill the entire bearing housing with grease.
If you overfill these assemblies I suspect you may do more harm than good, causing excess grease to be forced out past the seals, and perhaps even interfering with brake components.
Best wishes all, Dave.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Billy H" saying something like:
It's counter-productive; like so much else, the 'just enough' quantity can be gauged by experience or simply reading a manual or two.
Too much and it can blow seals out, leading to total loss of lube and severely contaminating the neighbouring components into the bargain. If those components happen to be safety-critical, like brakes, you can see the problem.
Another effect that might crop up would be the balls skidding on the races, rather than turning. If there's too much lube there's not enough friction there to keep rotation happening. Once a ball starts skidding, that bearing's pretty much looking at the end coming soon.
Pretty much; and leave space for the grease to go into.
As an illustration - most car makers use a miser's pinch of grease and generally the OE bearings last for ages. I think they use too little, but there you go.
The shortest-lived wheel bearings I've routinely dealt with are on m/bikes, where it's fairly common to replace them at around 50 or 60K due to the loading and harsh conditions. Even so, a good make of sealed bearings (Toyo) can double that.
Are you all talking about refilling the sealed front wheel bearings? Or the bearings that can be easily taken off and repacked, like in the rear of most water-cooled VWs? I would think that the excess grease would eventually make it into the grease cap instead of forcing it's way past the lips of the inner seal. I think I have read that even that cap should have a little grease put in it. Maybe I am totally wrong here. I have seen, or had to repack, some inner and outer wheel bearings that were only packed with grease at the bearings themselves. NOW that scares since if the grease gets hot and leaves those bearings = noise and destruction. I usually find that the outer bearing fails more often than the inner bearing that has the seal close to it. I rarely find grease that has forced it way past a seal to contaminate the shoes. 8^o I think I have replaced all of my wheel bearings back in 1991 and have only gone about 135K miles on them, but I might have packed my rear wheel bearings during the rear brake jobs (maybe 2 times during that period).
JMHO and have a happy holiday all! later, dave (One out of many daves)
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