I recently spent alot of money on Japanese bearings, so I’m going to oil/ lube the living dog crap out of them, lol.
But on the lubration/tool topic, I bought these squeeze bottles to store and meter out my oil changes on my 4 strokes. Pretty handy.
And another (non karting) tool purchase was my plastic welder. Didn’t anticipate a karting use until I threw chain and my plastic chain guard cracked. Then this thing went into immediate service and actually worked great.
Ooo fancy! (20 
)
I actually use the same bearings, year after year. Clean ‘em in the off season, grease them up, install and forget about them until the next off season.
What is your cleaning and relubing regiment?
One set is easy since the dirt shields are made to come off. But I use some brake clean, compressed air, and ultrasonic cleaner to get the old grease out. You’ll be able to tell if you’ve gotten it all out, it will have a little play and spin easy. Then I pack/put about two thirds volume of a nano ceramic grease in and put dirt shields back on. If the shields don’t come off it might take a little longer, but the ultrasonic cleaner will do most of the work, just keep running them through and blowing them out with compressed air. Squishing the grease past the dirt shields isn’t that tough, and you can tell when you’re about good on grease because the bearing will stiffen up, but feel smooth when u rotate it.
It might sound hard or time consuming but it isn’t after you’ve done it once or twice. And ultrasonic cleaners are fantastic for kart maintenance.
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They have some good stuff! I’m a mtn/road/gravel biker and have many Park tools!
I follow basically the same regime as Bubba, but tend to pop the dust seals out and do this after every race round since that is typically 10-14 hours running for endurance karting.
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Where do you source axle bearings with shields designed to be removed? I have just the stock OTK bearing right now and the shields are not designed to be removed from what I can tell. I tried using a pick to pull them but the shield just deformed. I think I would need 50x80mm bearing.
i have skf concentra bearings on one kart which is why i just maintain them, and the shields just pop off. SKF Ceramic axle bearing, 50x80mm – Msquared Karting
the other ones i just squish the grease through with the palm of my hand. the guy before me put 2 little holes in the shield, big enough to put that little straw you get with brake cleaner in. i squish the grease through there, and through the tiny gap between the shield and the housing.
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Are you cleaning the tires really well?
I like P&S brake buster or adams Adam's Polishes Tire & Rubber Cleaner | Best Way To Clean Brown Tires
Scrub the tires well with a stiff bristle brush, I like the tuffshine brush. You should see brown coming off the tire or if the tire is completely brown it’s because the antiozoneant in the tire is coming to the surface or “tire blooming”
It’s probably flinging off because it has nothing to bond to, you really have to scrub the tires and make sure they are dry.
For a tire dressing I like adams or Meguiars endurance tire gel, a little goes a long way, if I apply too much I just wipe it off with a cheap microfiber tower and throw it away.
This has been your daily detailing tip
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I too tried to remove the stock OTK bearing shields which deformed. For that reason, I ordered the vk50 bearings that I learned about in this recent tkart article. I didn’t feel the need for the ceramic/hybrid version based on other posts and research found on these forums:
I hadn’t tried really scrubbing it with a stiff brush. I’ll definitely give that a try when its warm enough to do a detail again! I tend to be lazy and use the tire cleaner foams, so its no surprise, I guess. Thanks!
250 for a bearing 
In sweden its now even allowed. but 250 ohh boy
As mentioned make sure to clean the tire. Then use a thicker dressing like Ammo NYC mud and a foam applicator to apply.
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I’ve had good success with Microblue steel bearings. They have removable shields which I’ve even cut back to not drag on the collar. They’re expensive even for their steel version, and I’m not so sure that the coating is really helping much, but at this point I’ve transferred those bearings to 3 different chassis and they keep on truckin. that longevity makes the cost more reasonable. I typically will clean and re-grease them 2-3x a year depending on how they feel and sound.
How did you cut the Microblue seals? Bought some (steel, the ceramic was a little too dear) and was disappointed with the seal drag. Also really struggled to get into bearing cassettes, they seemed to bind up once installed - I’ve never really thought they spun better installed than the cheap ones, although the big roundy-round car guys swear by MB.
I’ll second Microblue! I don’t know what kind of witchcraft is in their process, but I’ve seen the numbers and their claims are legit. I was the science monkey for an Indycar team I worked for and we spent a lot of time down in NC on this gearbox dyno (one of the coolest machines I’ve ever seen) looking for efficiency. We tested all kinds of nutty stuff and some of the biggest improvements we saw, were from Microblue bearings and this certain lube additive. We A-B-A tested the bearings and consistently saw notable gains in efficiency and just like you have seen, they lasted a lot longer.
So far my wallet has prevented me from trying them in my kart, but I hope to go this direction for the winter rebuild.
Took the seals off and trimmed the inside edge with an x-acto knife. Not as clean and consistent as I’d like, but it got the job done.