Sealed bearing flushes

[ETXbassassassin]

I keep hearing and reading about bearing flushes. How are you folks flushing sealed bearings without damaging the races? Any special tools needed? I like doing things myself. Any help or video links anyone knows of would be greatly appreciated. One is never finished learning until that day comes.

[pro reel]

First off, lets clarify the terms for bearings. You mentioned sealed bearings. Sealed bearings have a removable rubber seal between the inner and outer race. You have to remove the seals from sealed bearings before you can clean them. Most folks leave the seals off after cleaning. Fishing reels don't need seals. Seals are mostly recomended for use in areas where the bearings will be exposed to dirt.
Most bearings have shields. shileds are thin rings of stainless steel that are either pressed in or cliped with a wire ring between the two races. They are removable, but it's not easy to do, especialy in the smaller sizes. Shielded bearings have a gap between the shiled and the inner race. That gap can be very tight, but is usually big enough to be able to flush the bearing without removing the shield.
There are several ways to flush a shielded bearing. One common way is to simply soak them in solvet. This works somewhat, but without solvent flowing through the bearing, it will never get completly clean. Another way is to combine soaking with a rinse. To do that, soak the bearings overnight to soften deposits and then use a can of carb or brake cleaner with an extension nozzle on it, to spray the solvent into the gap around the race. Do that outside! The easiest way to flush bearings is to use an ultra sonic cleaning tank. The small jewelry cleaners work just fine for this. You use a small glass jar such as a shot glass etc. fill the cleaning tank with about 1 inch of plain water. Put your bearings in the shot glass and put about 1 inch of solvent in the shot glass. I use acetone, but white gas, naptha or mineral spirts are all solvents that seem to work. Set the shot glass in the cleaning tank with the water level about even with the slovent level and at least half of the bottle out of the water. Run the cleaning cycle for a few minutes and then dump the dirty solvent. Fill it back up with clean solvent and repeat the process until the solvent stays gin clear. After that, spin the bearing on the end of a tapered wood dowel to free up any stuck balls. Dry the bearing with DRY compressed air. Air compressers can condense water vapor and the air coming out will be wet. You can get bulb type air dryers that screw onto the end of your air line to dry the air. Body shop supply centers or aout parts stores sell them. After the ebaring is dry, lightly spin it. It should spin free and easy with no noise or only a slight buzz. If it feels rough at all or is noisy, it's probably a bad bearing. You can try to repaet the cleaning or you can move to another step of spinning the bearing while it's submerged in solvent. To do that, place a wood dowel in a drill. Stick the bearing on the end of the dowel and hold it in the solvent with one gloved hand while you rune the drill on hogh speed with the other. The solvent will flow through the spinning bearing and that will flush out the toghest particles of crud. If the bearing isn;t smooth as silk after that, then toss it and get a new one.

[ETXbassassassin]

Thank Mr. proreel I was hoping you'd be the man to reply. I've read most of your postings as far back as time allows for and I enjoy soaking up any knowledge you care to share. I don't have any bad bearings in my SX that I can feel, but oil changes in everything else is a must, so I figured why not in my favorite tool too Is there a certain lube or oil that you would recommend that's readily available at auto parts stores or tackle shops? I'm anxious and getting the jitters I enjoy doing things myself; even if most often it gets frustrating. Nothing ventured nothing gained. Thanks again Sir for your invaluable time and consideration.

[DVT Mike]

One drop of something very light is all you need. I use mostly TG Rocket Fuel and Boca Speed Oil in our shop. Oust is probably more readily available locally. Rem Oil and even simple sewing machine oil will work as well. Laying the bearing out on a paper towel for a while will draw out the solvent if you don't have compressed air handy. Be careful not to over spin a dry bearing.

[pro reel]

I prefer rocket oil also. I custom blend the yellow label and tournament label 50 50 to get the thickness i like. Any good oil will work, some just seem to work better. There is probably nothing wrong with just using 3in1 oil.

[Tavery5]

3 in 1 might actually be a good choice, if just using viscosity to decide.


Lube....Viscosity (cP) @ .....38F...........@78F.........@ 98F (cP)

Yellow RF ........................285..............59....... .......35
3-In-1 Oil.........................161....... ......40...............20
Quantum Hot Sauce...........100..............25............... 16

[Tavery5]

Lube.............................Viscosity@78F (cP)

Mobil-1 0W-30 (syn)..................400
Superlube w/PTFE..................... 245
Zebco Needle Oiler.................... 206
Quicksilver Storage Seal............ 203
Abu Silicoat Reel Oil..................176


Browning Midas Gun Oil (syn)... 140
Quicksilver PS and Trim Oil........136
BSB Speed Bearing...................114


Red RF (hc)...............................93
PMI Paintball Gun Lube...............90
Power Steering Fluid................. .90
Diawa Std Needle Oiler............ ...84
Reel-X.......................................74

ATF Dextron III...........................62
Shimano Std. (hc).......................60
Yellow RF (hc)............................59
3-In-1 Oil...................................40

-
Reel Butter..................................28
Quantum Hot Sauce......................25
X+1R..........................................21
Diawa TDZ lube (syn)...................18
Diawa/Liberto Pixy Lube (syn)........18
Whale Spit (hc)............................14
Abu Black Max .............................14

WD 40........................................6
Tournament RF (hc)......................4
Friction Zero Lub (hc/syn )............4
Rem Oil (hc)................................3

Reference: DI water.....................1
-------------------------------------------

Lube....Viscosity (cP) @ .....38F...........@78F.........@ 98F (cP)

Yellow RF ........................285..............59....... .......35
3-In-1 Oil.........................161....... ......40...............20
Quantum Hot Sauce...........100..............25............... 16

[ETXbassassassin]

Holy fudge balls! I like numbers, but Tav5 looks to be a numbers man more so than I. I'm gonna fire up the Wisdom-soft ScreenHunter 5.0 Free and snap some shots to file away in my Fishing folder. Thanks everyone for your input it is certainly appreciated and valued.

[musikman43155]

This is good info to have. I've got to do something to keep me busy this winter.

[musikman43155]

Is there a specific brand of ultrasonic cleaner that's much better than any other? I've looked @ them on ebay from $5 to $35.

[pro reel]

If you want one big enough to clean a full reel thats disasembled, then you need at least the 2.5 litter size. A heated tank is way better for cleaning, but you can just fill one with very hot water. here is one that I found on Ebay that would be great for cleaning reels
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-PRO-160-...item48433dc1f6

Now, if thats a little expensive or if you really just wanted one for bearings and small parts, here is a relly good one in that size. This is the upgraded model of the unit I use for bearings. I have one dedicated to bearings and then a larger heated unit for reels. This one could easily be used for most reels, but you might have to do some of the parts in 2 cleanings as they wont all fit at the same time. This is the size I started with and it worked fine, but not all parts would fit.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PRO-LARGE-60...item20c028790b

The cheapest units you see on ebay are jewelry cleaners that have a tank big enough to put a few rings in. Remember that the tank size is much smaller than the outside size of the unit. These jewelry cleaners would work for a shot glass with bearings in it, but you would not be able to fit any reel frames in them. You also wan't to make sure that they produce at least the 42000 mghz of the units I listed. Running time isn't an important feature as you only need to run bearings for a minute or two before you change the fluid and run them again. My bigets unit only runs 4 min utes so i have to restet it several times to clean reels, but thats easy.

[DVT Mike]

To do a few a reels of your own, save your money skip the usc. There's no replacement for hand scrubbing and close visual inspection of each part.

[pro reel]

Originally Posted by DVT Mike

To do a few a reels of your own, save your money skip the usc. There's no replacement for hand scrubbing and close visual inspection of each part.

Actually, there is no better way than to do both. No amount of scrubbing will get all the places a US cleaner will, and no US cleaner will do a good enough job without scrubbing the parts first.

Back to bearings, for everyone that thinks they can simply soak bearings in cleaning fluid, then shake them around and blow them off, that doesn't actually clean the inside of the bearing. That wouldn't even really clean anything. Try soaking some dirty dishes in a sink full of soapy water, then swish them around and set them in a drainer to dry. If there wasn't anything stuck on or dried on, they might look clean, but I wouldn't want to eat off of them. Now think about trying to clean the inside of an almost sealed up structure with moving parts inside it and tell me how soaking would clean that. US cleaners will clean them because they casue the cleaning fluid to go inside and agitate it with sound waves. The only other way to clean them is to remove the shields and spray cleaner into them under force.

[rrw4258]

This is the ultrasonic that I bought a couple months back. I bought the smaller 1 pint sized one for $30, but when I got it, it was on sale for $20 and I used a 20% of coupon for Harbor Freight found in the back of field and stream or bassmaster. It works perfect for what I need it for. The small one is heated.

http://www.harborfreight.com/catalog...asonic+cleaner

Ryan

[Bender]

I have the small one too, and do just as ProReel said above. I've done some reel parts in it, but you won't get a full frame in there. On the cheap it works well enough. Now the hard part is finding time to do all of my reels!