Wheel Bearings - Oil or Grease?

[jac04]

I did some searching, but didn't find what I was looking for. On my old 63, the wheel bearings were oil lubricated and the hubs had small oil fill ports to allow for an initial charge of oil upon re-assembly. My 73 SIII doesn't have these ports. All I have right now is the SII/IIA green manual, but it doesn't mention anything about using grease on the wheel bearings.

So, should the wheel bearings on the SIII be greased? If so, won't the oil from the rear differential or swivel pin housings eventually contaminate the grease? Just wondering what everyone else is doing.

Also, can someone point me in the direction of info on greasing the swivel pin housings versus using oil?

Thanks,
Jeff

[Leslie]

Since the coilers switched over to that one-shot tube of grease in the swivels, some have been trying that w/ Series. However, I like the idea of being able to drain and refill the swivels, so I've stuck w/ 90wt.....


FWIW....

[Eric W S]

"Also, can someone point me in the direction of info on greasing the swivel pin housings versus using oil?"

Check the usual online sources for a RRC or D-90 service manual.

I can't remember what I did when I serviced my axles on the 90.

[greenmeanie]

For the swivels you need to get hold of the LR one shot CV grease. This stuff is actually quite liquid compared to most people's idea of grease. One packet per side and just squeeze it in through the fill port same as filling with oil.

Draining the stuff is easy too as most of it will just flow out the drain plug. It helps to warm it up a little by going for a drive first. If you want things to be super clean just spray some brake cleaner or other such degreaser in the fill port and it will all wash out. It is really no more difficult to work with than oil.

Once this stuff encounters a spinning UJ it will spray everywhere inside the swivel and will lubricate the kingpin.

At that point it is down to personal preference. If you do a lot of wading or driving in sand the oil is attractive as it is a lot cheaper to replace. It can also be used in the steering box successfully.

If you are using it because if leaky seals my only advice is to fix the root problem and then apply the lubricant of choice.

[TeriAnn]

I've always greased wheel bearings during assembly. Yes in a Series the oil from the swivel ball will flow down the axle tube and into the space with the wheel bearings. Yes it will dilute the grease. But I think the important part is that the bearings will be lubed at initial spin and stay lubed. That's why I grease them before the 90 wt gets a chance to work its way down the tube and coat the bearings.

For the swivels you need to get hold of the LR one shot CV grease.

Geeeezzzze, I hoped this was put to bed a decade ago. The one shot swivel grease was developed for coilers so that there would be less dealer warranty repairs from 90 wt leaking out of swivel seals. They made the lubricant as thick as possible and still properly lubricate CV joints in order to minimize the chances of a swivel seal leak during the warranty period. The stuff works just fine for CV joints and Series steering boxes with their uncaged bearings. However, Series front axles do not have CV joints.

Series front axles have U joints. These U joints have needle bearings tucked inside of cups. Clearances around the needle bearings are a lot closer than CV joint clearances. One of the things that the lubrication does is remove heat from the bearing surfaces. The thicker one shot grease does not flow well into the needle bearing spaces and it doesn't do as good a job as 90wt at removing heat from the bearing area. Also the lubricant needs to flow down the axle hub into the wheel bearing area to keep the wheel bearings lubed over time. Easier to happen with oil than grease.

One shot grease seems to work OK on Series rigs that get driven infrequently or a lot on short distance (under 100 miles) drives. If you put long miles on your Series Land Rover I suggest that you follow the factory recommendations and use 90 wt gear oil. If you don't drive it much, you can get away with just about anything.

If you want to use one shot grease I suggest axle assemblies with CV joints in them.

[jac04]

Good stuff. Thanks.
I like the idea of using the grease on the steering box. Anyone know how many grease packets it takes to fill a Series steering box?

[greenmeanie]

Series front axles have U joints. These U joints have needle bearings tucked inside of cups. Clearances around the needle bearings are a lot closer than CV joint clearances. One of the things that the lubrication does is remove heat from the bearing surfaces. The thicker one shot grease does not flow well into the needle bearing spaces and it doesn't do as good a job as 90wt at removing heat from the bearing area. Also the lubricant needs to flow down the axle hub into the wheel bearing area to keep the wheel bearings lubed over time. Easier to happen with oil than grease.

One shot grease seems to work OK on Series rigs that get driven infrequently or a lot on short distance (under 100 miles) drives. If you put long miles on your Series Land Rover I suggest that you follow the factory recommendations and use 90 wt gear oil. If you don't drive it much, you can get away with just about anything.

If you want to use one shot grease I suggest axle assemblies with CV joints in them.

Hmmm,
I'd like to see any scientific data that supports this. Bearing (no pun intended) in mind that at 50 mph and 32" yrs the UJ is spinning at 522rpm. The centrifugal force generated across the 1" internal span and approx 3" span of a UJ at these speeds is considerable and will force either of these lubricants in there with a vengeance. I will guarantee that without an outlet in the bottom of the cup you have a dead head and there is very little flow through the needles. The lubricant will get pushed round the race by the needles, some will push out and more will be forced in but it is not really a flow.

The 90wt is better for heat removal but unless you spend all day driving in circles the needles in the front half shaft are not getting worked that hard compared to those in the prop shafts which work just fine with grease.

As regards the travel of the lubricants round the hub take a whisk of your choice and run it in a bucket of oil or grease at 500rpm. They are both going to go everywhere. I have had reson to strip a newly rebuilt hub after only a couple of miles of driving (Not one of my finer mechanical moments) and there was already grease under the hub cap - it may travel 'slower' but that is really quite academic as slow is purely relative.

I put about 100Kmiles driving 1000miles a week on an axle with grease in the swivels before overhauling it. The same UJs are still in there now and the kingpins were also reuseable.

I design rotating equipment for the aerospace industry and lubrication/cooling is a big issue. The simple answer is that if the stuff flows and you put it in a cavity with a rotor it will go everywhere.

As you state the whole oil vs grease thing is very old. Use whatever tickles your fancy as they will both work just fine with any reliability difference being imperceptible in the general scheme of Rover maintenance.

[109 Pretender]

Go to TeriAnn's website ASAP!

I'm sure someone has said this before so forgive me - if you are a new series LR owner, go to TeriAnn's website and bookmark it. Every day go there and read (or reread) the section that interests you most. This is the single most useful LR website I've ever found. There's a bunch of sites out there too - many very informative. However, none compare to her depth and breadth of 1st hand experience. Everything she said in this thread is the gospel - period! Could you use the one shot grease in a series - sure, it's better than no lube... CV's have different requirements though and your series doesn't use them. Her rational as to the change is also very plausible as I once worked at a Ferrari/Jag/MG/ u get the idea stealership as a line technician (we called ourselves wrenches back then) and that's the way factory reps think.
Replace the seals, refill w/90wt. (My swivels were hardchromed after I repaired the corrosion areas and they don't leak a drop of 90 wt. after more than 10 years)

Cheers!

[Eric W S]

I gotta agree with Green on this one. It'd be interesting to see solid data to support the strong opinion for 90 weight.

I still think the best explantion I have ever heard that makes sense in the real world about the one shot grease was that it was cost driven, not warranty driven. Land Rover has been continuously driving down quality and focusing on manufacturing costs instead.

[109 Pretender]

Eric,
Grease WILL work - just not as effectively as 90wt. Your reasoning is correct - to a point. ALL auto manufacturing decisions are cost based (necessary in a for-profit organization like LR). But I suspect there is little, if any, cost savings for the manufacturer whether they use grease or oil. There is a HUGE savings if warranty claims can be solved w/grease vs. replacing swivel balls (corrosion) and seals, etc. Even better if the grease prevents the warranty claim to begin with... Remember this - Einstein/Newton were both wrong - MONEY makes the world go around, at least it used to until just recently....

[109 Pretender]

Railco Bush

One thing about the grease that keeps me from using it is the Railco Bush at the top of the swivel. This has a vsmall hole in bottom to allow lube in - meaning lube has to travel vertically. Some lube also splashes in around the "ear" of the swivel it's pressed into. Even though Green mentioned that the grease has a low viscosity it's still higher I guess than 90 wt. oil. That bush is the most fragile wear item in the housing - made from a synthetic material (probably soybeans of some kind that comes in contact with top kingpin shaft made of steel. I have used Almasol 601 gear lube (Lubrication Engineers, FT. Worth) since the early 70's when I raced an MG in SCCA. This 90 wt is like honey - it has a very high cling factor and sticks to gears, etc like glue. Everybody has their own poison and this lube was the only thing we found that could keep Jag and MG boxes together under hard racing conditions. In fact this is the only gear lube that I use in my 109 in the 28 years I've owned it.

[greenmeanie]

Eric,
Grease WILL work - just not as effectively as 90wt.

Again I simply ask - where's the science or data to support this. There are lots of subjective viewpoints on this. I am asking for an objective ****ysis.

There are many more issues than mere cost. One could compare maintenance cycles, protection of the lower bearing after wading as oil will float on top of any water that collects in the swivel while the grease clings to the balls protecting them. I can go on and on.

Just to keep things interesting I have run rgease in an axle and am running oil this time. I run grease in my 101 that originally specced with CV's bathed in oil and the 109 I am building now - well we'll see how I feel on the day.

The big advantage of oil in my opinion is that is cheaper for the owner to replace under regular maintenance and is one less type of fluid to carry on the road.

[leafsprung]

Opinions

Everything she said in this thread is the gospel - period!

Nobody's word is gospel. I have a lot of respect for Teriann and her knowledge of, and travels with, land rovers. However, she would probably be the last person to tell you that she was the most knowledgeable/experienced land rover mechanic alive. Many people are going to have different experiences with different maintenance techniques. Frankly both methods will work fine. Many if not most people have free wheel hubs which means these needle bearings are not under constant load when driving for extended periods of time. Furthermore there is a fairly significant gap in between the Ujoint cross and the bearing cup (you can easily see the roller bearings) which is sufficent for either the oil or the "one shot grease" to pass through. Ive disassembled shafts out of trucks with both types of lubricant and there was definitely lubricant in the needle bearings on both assemblies. Ive never heard of a failure or even a rumor of a failure from using "one shot grease". Does one work better than the other? Probably, but not enough to notice. Personally I use 90 wt because Im too cheap to be bothered with grease at 25 bucks a tube (what the dealership charges for it)

[daveb]

edit. I see this is already being beat to death. nevermind.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


TeriAnn you are not the only one to offer this viewpoint. Care to share with us your personal experiences with actual failures of u-jointed series land rover axles that can be attributed to the use of one shot grease?

Thanks
DaveB

The thicker one shot grease does not flow well into the needle bearing spaces and it doesn't do as good a job as 90wt at removing heat from the bearing area.

[Eric W S]

Eric,
Grease WILL work - just not as effectively as 90wt. Your reasoning is correct - to a point. ALL auto manufacturing decisions are cost based (necessary in a for-profit organization like LR). But I suspect there is little, if any, cost savings for the manufacturer whether they use grease or oil. There is a HUGE savings if warranty claims can be solved w/grease vs. replacing swivel balls (corrosion) and seals, etc. Even better if the grease prevents the warranty claim to begin with... Remember this - Einstein/Newton were both wrong - MONEY makes the world go around, at least it used to until just recently....

I really don't want to talk shop here, but there could be considerable savings in choosing one option over another. But let's not degrade ourselves by even discussing it any further. Accounting and cost discussions are boring and that is coming from one.

I think that the whole grease argument is best left to the physics behind the actual lubrication, IMO. Lubrication technology has advanced leaps and bounds since the the Series hey-day. So as Green has stated, grease is a viable option that is best left for the owner to implement or not. I think any discussions of warranty issues from other models is really detrimental and confusing to the topic - "what's better for my swivels".

EDIT:
And money still makes the world go round!