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Showerthought: I packed bearings by feel for 12 years, now I use a $4 kitchen scale
For over a decade I did wheel bearings the way my dad showed me, glob of grease in the palm, pack it till it looks full, send it. Last winter a guy at the shop in Amarillo watched me do a trailer hub and asked if I'd ever weighed the grease, which I thought was a joke. Turns out a bearing that size takes about 3 grams, and when I tested my hand method on a scale I was hitting anywhere from 2 to 9 grams depending on how distracted I was. Now I zero out a cheap kitchen scale, scoop grease into the cage until it reads 3 grams, and move on, takes maybe 20 extra seconds. The real win is that I quit second guessing myself on comebacks, and the one bearing I pulled apart after 20k miles looked textbook. Anyone else weigh grease or am I the only weirdo with a kitchen scale on the bench now?
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anna7927d ago
Grabbed a $12 digital scale from Wally World years ago for this exact reason and never looked back. Weighing works but the real trick is figuring out your target number per bearing size, I keep a little cheat sheet taped to the bench, 3g for the small trailer hubs, 5 to 6 for the bigger truck stuff. One thing nobody tells you, zero the scale with the cage on it first or you'll chase your tail trying to do math in your head. And yeah the comeback thing is huge, when a guy brings a hub back you either know you hit the number or you don't, no guessing. Only downside is you gotta keep the scale clean or grease gets in the buttons and it starts acting stupid.
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