Interesting, by design they are supposed to be sealed and have lubrication built in. If you can improve on the design and add your own lube, that's great. Not exactly by the book. In the trucks running the same bearing tensioning the belt around the engine they generally go 100,000 miles or so without removing the seals to grease them. I don't know how many times a motorcycle wheel would turn to equal 100,000 miles in the truck, but it would be a lot. Those bearings in the truck are constantly spinning at a pretty good RPM. 6203 is a good bearing. I've never ever had to replace a bearing yet in my Kawasakis, even with 167,000 miles on the 6203Z in the KZ650 and 80,000 miles on the 2RS in the KZ1000.
OKC_Kent wrote:
Rob,
Yes, grease them up yourself. The shields are easy to remove with a pick, and easy to put back on.
When I bought my new sealed wheel bearings I opened them up. 2 out of 3 had a thin, clear, small dab of grease. It looked like Vaseline or something... 1 bearing was bone dry. I packed them with wheel bearing grease and was good to go.
As far as the grease seal, I wondered if I needed it as the bearings are sealed now. I wound up buying a new one anyway, it was cheap enough.<br><br>Post edited by: OKC_Kent, at: 2006/01/10 16:19