What grease do I pack my bearings with?

Hello I was replacing my wheel bearings and I was wondering if I use marine grease being as it is moisture resistant or high temp wheel grease to pack my bearings or if there is a better brand than another just curious what everyone else does

Thank You
John

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I use the West Marine brand grease. Our auto parts stores have many kinds of bearing grease but none say for marine use of boat trailer. Auto grease will wash out pretty quickly and doesn't play as well with water as marine does.

If this is your first time doing bearings a few things that will make life easier. 1 Lots of rags. Make sure they are clean so no contaminates from other projects. I use 4-6 rags per wheel. Toss them out when your done. 2. A box of rubber gloves. A lot easier to keep clean and that contamination thing again. 3. Use some emery cloth on the spindle where the seal rides. Having that clean and smooth goes a long way insuring the rear seal doesn't crap out on you at 6am Sunday morning on your way to the best boating day of the season.

A few rules of the grease: 1 Never use different types or manufacturers of grease. What grease you start the bearings with is what you should end the season with. You never know if one company has something in there grease that is incompatible with another.
2 Do a good job on packing the bearings with grease prior to install. A fast job here might find your bearing running dry and being toast 2 miles down the road. Check your Bearing Buddies every day to make sure they are full but not over filled.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I use the same marine gun grease I use everywhere else on the boat. I get the little tubes for the utulity grease gun I carry with to maintain the bearing buddies, and a big tube for the re-pack job. The Super-tech stuff at Wal-Mart works fine.

You shouldn't need a high temp grease unless you have trailer brakes and use them heavily. The bearings (If they're right) don't generate much heat, but brakes do.

hope it helps
John

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I use the Marine bearing grease you can purchase at just about any Wal mart. I've been using it for years in my bearings and have never had a problem.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

What color is the grease you guys are using?

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I'm using Lucas Red N' Tacky in mine. Exellent water resistance and fully synthetic.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I use "Green Grease" from Autozone and it seems to work just fine. Only grease I found that said "waterproof" on the packaging.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

Is there a grease that is not "waterproof"? Do oil and water mix now? Any grease that says water resistant, waterproof, or anything like these is a marketing ploy. Use any wheel bearing grease that you want. It makes no difference what color or how waterproof it is.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

wifisher said:

Is there a grease that is not "waterproof"? Do oil and water mix now? Any grease that says water resistant, waterproof, or anything like these is a marketing ploy. Use any wheel bearing grease that you want. It makes no difference what color or how waterproof it is.

Click to expand...

True.....however the Marine grade grease have more corrosion inhibitors and are less likely to break down. I've used both the standard high temp wheel bearing grease and the marine grade grease and I can tell you from experience that when I break down the bearings with the standard high temp wheel bearing grease, the grease has mixed with and has thinned with the water. When I broke down the bearings that I used the marine grade grease with....the grease was not as thinned as the regular wheel bearing grease.

I do about 98% of my boating in fresh water.......in the lakes of North Texas. Maybe our water here is different than yours.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I use fully synthetic wheel grease for everything. On my car truck and boat. The trailer is a 89 and still has the original bearings and racEs. I re pack the bearings every fall before storage. I usually put a pump or two of new in every other time out. Have I been lucky or is the fully synthetic grease as good as the marine. I think it costs more?!?!

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

wifisher said:

Is there a grease that is not "waterproof"? Do oil and water mix now? Any grease that says water resistant, waterproof, or anything like these is a marketing ploy. Use any wheel bearing grease that you want. It makes no difference what color or how waterproof it is.

Click to expand...

Run your trailer with water in the hub,or run your engine with water in the crankcase!! Yes- you will find out that water and oil DO mix.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I use Valvoline wheel bearing grease. Who knows?? It has a picture of a boat on the front. I wouldn't think that submerging a wheel twice a day for a few minutes would have any more effect on a bearing than driving in in the rain or running through water puddles in the road. I have never had a wheel bearing fail that had enough wheel bearing grease in it and was properly adjusted.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I have a leaky hub on my trailer.Haven't been able to figure out why it leaks yet. Running in the rain a hub won't get wet,but when you submerge it during launch you have a lot of water PRESSURE forcing water into the hub and bearings. Mine gets a couple of t-spoonfuls of water in it at launch,it hasn't failed yet because I keep an eye on it-I drain the milk shake out and repack the bearings every time out.I'm getting real tired of packing bearings.
It'll be fixed this year,even if I have to buy a new axle!

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

dlngr said:

I have a leaky hub on my trailer.Haven't been able to figure out why it leaks yet. Running in the rain a hub won't get wet,but when you submerge it during launch you have a lot of water PRESSURE forcing water into the hub and bearings. Mine gets a couple of t-spoonfuls of water in it at launch,it hasn't failed yet because I keep an eye on it-I drain the milk shake out and repack the bearings every time out.I'm getting real tired of packing bearings.
It'll be fixed this year,even if I have to buy a new axle!

Click to expand...

Are you using the "Double" wheel bearing seals on the inside of your hub? Typically the bearing seals you buy at Academy, Wal mart, Tractor supply etc are single layer seals. If you buy the bearing seals that are specific to marine applications, you should be able to keep the water out of your hubs. It worked for me when I did it.

Good luck and post up the results.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

I use the green grease as well. Its very tacky and hard to wipe off with a rag... so I figure it will do well in bearings. Usually $7-9 at any parts store.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

'78 Crusader said:

Are you using the "Double" wheel bearing seals on the inside of your hub? Typically the bearing seals you buy at Academy, Wal mart, Tractor supply etc are single layer seals. If you buy the bearing seals that are specific to marine applications, you should be able to keep the water out of your hubs. It worked for me when I did it.

Good luck and post up the results.

Click to expand...

Yeah thanks Crusader-I used the double seals,marine stuff,but still leaks. The one on there right now is the cheapy Walmart one though.[doesn't leak any worse! I can't see any problem with the seat for the seal either,after polishing it with emery cloth.....
I think I will buy a new set of bearing buddies,maybe the water is getting in from that. I will post the info if I find some profound secret to this problem!!! [By the way,this is only a leak on one side-the left side still has the bearing I installed at least 2 years ago. The right side is on it's fourth new bearing and seal set.]

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

3. Use some emery cloth on the spindle where the seal rides.

I would never use anything abrasive on the spindle,,,,,, especially where the seal runs. Just keep it really clean. If it is rough, you already have problems. There are shims you can get to fit over the seal surface that may work for you. DO NOT use anything rough on the spindle.

If ANY WATER is found in your bearings/grease,,be sure to remove all the old grease, check seals, and repack the bearings if they are not damaged by the water. If bearings do have water in the grease and sit up for a while, the bearings will rust and probably need replacing. Cheap when you consider that a bad (rusted) bearing may seize and ruin the spindle if the bearing races spin on the spindle.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

Humm water getting into wheel bearings. Sounds like seals are not working as they should. When installing new seals, be sure to prelube them with some of the grease so they will not be damaged by a dry run-in. A hot hub could cause water to be sucked into the bearings when cooled by submerging in the water. Maybe check (feel) the hubs BEFORE submerging them, just is case there might be a heat problem. Hubs should only be warm to the touch. If you find one that might feel a bit too hot, let it cool a bit before putting it in the water. Check for proper lubrication as soon as you can and try to find out why the extra heat.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

sea_goin_dude said:

Humm water getting into wheel bearings. Sounds like seals are not working as they should. When installing new seals, be sure to prelube them with some of the grease so they will not be damaged by a dry run-in. A hot hub could cause water to be sucked into the bearings when cooled by submerging in the water. Maybe check (feel) the hubs BEFORE submerging them, just is case there might be a heat problem. Hubs should only be warm to the touch. If you find one that might feel a bit too hot, let it cool a bit before putting it in the water. Check for proper lubrication as soon as you can and try to find out why the extra heat.

Click to expand...

I always allow hubs to cool before submerging and never have leaks. 10-15 minutes is suffice. and if you keep the hub full and bb's packed, water won't enter...well maybe a little. in Fall i pull the bb's off there maybe a drop.

Re: What grease do I pack my bearings with?

Last year I did the engineering work on repairing/restoring several hundred semi-trailers that were submerged in the Nashville flood. These trailers spent about three days with their axles submerged. What we found on those trailers might provide useful to this discussion. The process involved tearing down all of the axles (as well as a lot of other stuff) to the point of removing end caps and checking for water in the axle beam. Now keep in mind these trailers are not meant to have the axles submerged.

1. Grease does matter. Grease that is 'solid' at ambient temperature performed better (keeping water out) than grease than was liquid (so called oil bath) at ambient. The best grease, or at least the grease that will keep water out of a submerged axle for three days the best seems to be Chevron Delo SF synthetic.
2. The condition of axle hubcaps also matters, as does the quality of the attaching mechanism.
3. Wheel bearing seal performance is affected more by the amount and quality of grease than the physical condition of the seals. I also posed the question to a number of the service engineers at a couple of the seal manufacturers as to what the difference was between boat trailer seals and 'regular' seals and the answer was nothing other than packaging. The intent of the question was to determine if the submerged trailer seals could be re-used (normal practice if there are no physical defects.)

My conclusion is that if regular wheel end inspections are carried out, and axles are kept greased with a quality grease, water intrusion should be minimal.

The other thing we learned. If water does get in, toss the bearings (race and cup) if there is even the smallest sign of corrosion.