How to grease rear wheel Bearings? (81 550 LTD)

Well, I want to re-grease my wheel bearings. I can't seem to understand how I'm supposed to remove bearings from the wheel. or how to access the ball bearings to grease them. The service manual is no help. All it says is to check and grease the bearings, with no instruction otherwise.

I have the rear wheel off, sprocket off, coupling off, brake off, etc. All I have is the rear wheel&tire with the bearings and center sleeve installed. I took off the snap ring that was over the left side bearing. What I see is a bearing on either side. each has a steel seal over it. No rubber seal to remove to access the bearing guts. No apparent way to remove the bearings without damage to get at the backside.

How am I supposed to clean and grease these rear wheel bearings? :blink: will the front wheel be the same?(lubricating wheel bearings is in the manual as part of the regular maintenance)

I don't think it's possible to remove the old bearings without damaging them. I believe that spacer between the bearings makes it impossible to reach through with a long drift pin and tap on the outer race to drive the bearing out. As you already know, if you tap on the inner race you will wreck the bearing. You could try to clean and re-grease them in place, but that might be very difficult to do well. If you simply add grease without removing all the old grease you can run into the problem of the 2 different greases being incompatible, and that would mean poor lubrication. Your best bet may be to replace the bearings. If you do, you may want to buy sealed bearings (they will probably have a ZZ suffix). The front will have the same issue. Fortunately, bearings are not terribly expensive. Ed

In that case, I'll just feel the bearing action as it's rolling to see if it's rough and replace if neccesary.. I don't get why they would put to lube the bearings every two years if it's impossible? idk. metal shielded bearings oh boy.

Just clean it up best I can then I guess.

Thank you for the reply! that was quick These little hold-ups get to me when I cant figure something out lol.

oh, by the way, If I tapped out the sprocket holder bearing by the inner race, is it shot?

wakeboardr42393 wrote: oh, by the way, If I tapped out the sprocket holder bearing by the inner race, is it shot?

Most likely, yes. When you tap on the inner race of a bearing the inner race then hits against the ball bearings which then hit against the outer race until it is driven out of the wheel or sprocket holder. When this happens that lateral pounding between the ball bearings and the inner and outer races usually damages the races. This damage is known as "brinelling." When you tap only on the edge of the outer race, no pressure is brought to bear between the inner or outer races and the ball bearings so nothing is damaged. As a precaution, I would replace that sprocket bearing. Ed

Ed is spot on, as usual. The inner race is strictly hands off for any type of force.
AFA pricing, aren't there bearing companies that will sell the exact spec bearing for much less money?
Over on the off-brand forum they know the specs of the bearings (inner diameter, outer diameter, and thickness), and just go to a generic bearing dealer. Do you guys do that here? I could get the names of the distributors if you are interested.

I have done that locally. Also, ronayers.com sell bearings. Ed

Change the bearings and buy ZZ sealed ones.

If it's a low mileage bike, it's possible the bearing grease is fine, even if it is old. When I removed the stock spoked wheels from my 650-CSR, the grease looked good to me.

When I refurbished a set of cast alloy wheels from a 550, I installed the All-Balls-Racing bearing sets from Z1Enterprises.com. The handy thing about the sets is that they include the oil seals, which included the seal for the speedo drive. I don't know if it saves money to buy the bearings from a bearing supplier & then get the seals from Z1Ent or the dealer... the kits were easier. I probably wouldn't have cleaned & lubricated the speedo drive if that seal wasn't included.

The OEM stock bearings are very good quality. They can often survive banging on the inner race some, but that's not advised for obvious reasons.

If you need to replace the bearings it's strongly advised to get your hands on a bearing puller. I recently tried and failed to remove the bearings on my 750 wheels using a hammer and drift. Borrowed a friends Pit Posse bearing puller tool and they were out in one min.

For bearings, Nachi bearings from Japan are readily available and cheap from ebay. Nicer quality than the All Ball's bearings (although those are fine too).

Too brands are NTN, NSK or Timken from Japan. The best for me is from Europe: SKF.

That last brand is the one we use at the textile factory I work at.

yeah, I've come to my conclusion that the bearings in this wheel are sealed bearings. but my bike only has like 7k miles? hmm. well, I just cleaned it all off best I could and put it back together. the sprocket bearing is not sealed and the reason I tapped it out was to clean and re-grease it. I'll keep an eye on that sprocket bearing for any weird wear or play or anything. thanks!

now I have another problem: I was disassembling my drum brake, and I took off the drum brake cam lever (the lever arm thing that fits on the end of the brake cam) without marking the position of the lever related to the cam. well now. :whistle: lol. I guess I'll just put the wheel and everything back on and try to assume what angle the lever fits on, after I have everything hooked up. any tricks to this?

dang, this is one great website for a "kz" newbie. You guys are great for info and help! thank you all