Is there a difference between Tri Flow and white lithium lubes?
what’s the best way to clean axle bearings of dirt. mine are filled with dirt and are making the same grinding noise. i’ve been spraying brake cleaner and wd40 for 10 minutes and nothing is seeming to break them free
Place in trash can, buy new.
I’m gonna try putting it in an ultrasonic cleaner before i trash it.
Bearings are cheap. They really aren’t worth the hassle of cleaning and re-gressing.
aren’t they $135? or do i not have to buy the whole thing? edit: Okay i see they are $40ish. not bad.
Also if you’re removing them from the cassettes to clean then you may as well just replace.
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Ultrasonic cleaner, in some degreaser usually does the trick for me. Blast them with compressed air. Run them through a few times, let the ultrasonic cleaner do the work.
I usually do this procedure instead of buying new ones, even though some bearings are inexpensive, because I’m impatient and can get this knocked out faster than ordering and waiting.
Well, in my head it’s faster.
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it would save me $90 if it works. because both have dirt in them. the track was just finished a few months ago so it’s just a dust bowl around the outside of the circuit. whole kart was flooded with dirt lol
do you put the whole cassette and bearing in? or remove the bearing?
Remove the bearing and clean the cassette separately
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Definitely take bearings out of the cassettes.
@LRMcDouble can you post pictures of the bearings and then after you do the cleaning and also if the gunk that comes out?
i will update you, yes
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How difficult should it be to get bearings in and out of cassettes?
I bought a kart that didn’t have the pinch bolts installed in the cassettes, and there was a lot of play between bearing/cassette and a slight crunchiness to the bearings so I bought new cassettes and bearings.
It was very difficult to get the new bearings into the cassettes - really had to use an axle for leverage to get them into place, and once installed, the bearings did not spin as free as they did pre-install. Also was a real bear to get the bearings aligned well to get the axle installed without any sort of pre-load on it. After a couple of weekends it seems OK - not as free-spinning as it was before replacing, but not terrible.
If it should be easier to install and move the bearings in the cassettes, how do you achieve that? I doubt you’re going to be able to do anything with the hardened steel bearing OD - so you’d have to try to polish away some material on ID of bearing cassette?
What brand of kart was it? I’ve had a few different brands and everyone was the same. Turn the bearing perpendicular to the cassette, insert it through the slot, rotate it parallel. Zero fight to get them in.
Parolin cadet, MicroBlue bearings.
I had a parolin cadet, if its the same cassettes mind had, it should be a 10 second job to change bearings.
getting the bearings in and out of the cassettes has never been quite as easy, for me, as some of the other folks have described. i keep the pinch bolts out or loose, but sometimes the fit is really snug and i need to tap the bearings in the last bit with my plastic tipped hammer. i also sand out the inside of the cassette, just to give a little more clearance, but only if i really have trouble getting the bearing in, in the first place.
have you tried using the axle and a soft mallet to bang it the rest of the way out?