Took my rear hub apart today

GoldenMotor.com

biknut

Well-Known Member
Sep 28, 2010
6,632
411
83
Dallas
I'm big on maintenance. Now that I've mortorized my bicycle I'm thinking do I really trust Chinese quality control to be good enough to lube my wheel bearings now that it goes twice as fast and 10x farther than it used to? I don't think so.

I've never taken a coaster brake hub apart before, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night so..... lol.

When I first cracked it open the bearings looked ok, but the grease was black and nasty looking. My bike only has a couple hundred miles on it, 100 while motorized. I'm glad I decided to look at it.



Since I'm not familiar with it I tried to keep the parts in order as I took it apart. After that I cleaned the old grease off the parts. At this point I made a little mistake, but it didn't hurt much.



So now I need some fresh grease. Any grease is better than no grease so I'll just grab any old ordinary stuff I can find in my cupboard. This RedLine pure synthetic should get the job done.



I have a simple philosophy when it comes to packing wheel bearings. When the grease gets up to your armpits that's enough grease. That brings up the slight mistake I made. Since I've never done this before I should have put the whole assembly together dry just so it would be easy to see what it looked like when it's put together properly. After I managed to somehow stuff 18 lbs of grease in the hub, when I tried to put it together it didn't want to go back all the way. When i opened it back up it was hard to see what was wrong looking through all that grease, but after a couple tries if figured it out.



I like to adjust the end play to where you can just bearly feel a little bit. Now it turns real smooth and the end play is tighter than it was.
 

reb1

New Member
Aug 15, 2010
116
0
0
CALIFORNIA
Your welcome biknut: Google is your friend. There is allot of info on the web. Park tool has tutorials on bicycle maintenance. There is also some videos at other sites to help. I like the late Sheldon Brown's articles also as do some other members who post them.