I am in the middle of a brake/wheel bearing job on my 89 4runner, just curious if you guys clean all the old grease out of the hub when repacking bearings? How much grease is needed-does the whole cavity need to be filled with grease? Just want to make sure I do it right,the crappy Haynes says to put a small amt. of grease behind the races-i don't know if I buy that.Thanks.

 

..actually doing this on sunday. I just repack the bearings and clean out the dirty looking grease and leave some. Last time I did them it still looked like factory grease around the hub and it hadnt been used, so I left it...

 

so is it important to have a ton of grease in the cavity?

 

I'm not sure... the grease in mine looked stock and hadnt been touched so I figured it was there for a reason.. .But as far as adding more i didn't...

Hopefully somebody else will chime in too...

 

I just did my wheel bearings, and wondered the same thing. The middle cavity was just caked in a combination of old and quasi-new grease.

I cleaned most of it out, and just left a thin coat (thin coat, not the 3/8" that was there before)

 

Interesting.....I just did my front wheel bearings (hadn't been done in the 6 years I've owned truck). I also wondered about the grease in the middle cavity.

To be safe I cleaned out all the old and packed a the same amount that was in there before with new Bel Ray grease.

Put it all back together and everything is fine so it sounds like you can go either way (fill cavity or not). I think the most important step is the proper tightening, loosening, tightening, or hub nuts.

Good luck !!

 

Tho I've not done this myself, I understand that too much grease in there can cause the hubs to remain 'locked' even after tryin to disengage them. Sounds like erring on the side of a smaller amount is the way to go.

Mike in AR

 

When all you repack your bearings do you always change the seals? When the hub is taken apart do the seals get messed up or can they be reused?

 

The grease in ? here is not in the locking hub, but in the hub portion of the rotor.. at least thats what I am refering to..

 

clean it all out! you don't want old, contaminated grease in your nice new $50 worth of bearings! although this is easier said than done unless you have a parts washer.

when repacking, put a film of grease on the inside surface of the hub, prevents rust if any moisture should happen to get in. don't pack it full like a boat hub, though. all that grease in the center is never going to be of benefit to anything.

 

Thanks for the replies guys I like Kyle22r's answer best cause it is about what I was thinking.As for the proper tightening sequence for the lock nut is this as important a step as it sounds? Will the bearings get damaged if you just snugged the nuts on and ran it? I still have the truck apart so I just need to know if I should be careful when doing this.Thanks.

 

Usually there's a tightening sequence for a reason. Especially when you've got steel meeting aluminum, you need to ease the meeting process with a gentle tightening sequence.

 

Usually the extra grease comes when the factory and quick lube place use a auto-packing machine to repack bearings. they hook is fill it with grease and clean out some of the excess. They can repack the inner bearing with this machine with removing the hub. Then charge you 700(that is what the toyota Stealership wanted to repack and alignment). So no you don't need all that grease, it can cause the bearing to overheat(a rep. machinist told me that). Just my .02!

 

I think the real purpose of cleaning all grease out is to insure grease compatiblility. If you know for sure you are using the same grease, you could probably get away with leaving old grease in hub. As far as bearings go, I always clean them, then repack. This way I know the contaminants are gone.

 

Packed mine today, I removed all of it but a film for rust. Toyota packed these last and they used some grease that was not as solid as the grease I replaced it with, it only had maybe 20K on it, so shouldn't have been that nasty, but oh well its done now.