Wheel Bearing Servicing
 

I'm about to clean/pack the wheel bearings that came with the Matco parts. The bearing number is: LM67000LA-CR. My question is: do you pop off the rubber seal in order to clean and then pack the bearing or do you leave he seal in place. One of them easily pops off whereas the others would need some extra effort.

I believe that the rubber is left in place. I had a set of bearings like that and cleaned/greased many times. That was the recommendation at that time. You may want to give Matco tech support a quick call/email....

Thanks for passing on your experience. I read through the Matco documentation again last night and it says that the rubber seal is 'INTEGRATED SEAL' (in all caps) and never suggested taking them off. So I left them on and greased them with Aeroshell 22; it worked fine.

Wheel Bearing Seal
 

Pay attention to the MFG instructions when reinstalling the large Nut and "tensioning" the bearings. The procedure is different from what we learned on our old Chevy's. When tightened correctly there is more drag than "normal" and the grease seals remain stationary when the wheel spins.

I'd forgotten that until I found the MATCO documentation. Then had to lift the plane and do it all over again.

...and remember that the MATCO nose wheel on the RV-12 has a different means of installing/tightening its sealed wheel bearings. Follow the MATCO service instructions and Van's RV-12 KAI and MM.

How are people packing and repacking their main wheel bearings with grease?
 

I ask because I initially tried packing my main wheel bearings with Aeroshell 22 grease via the Lisle 34550 Handy Packer Bearing Packer. Even with putting all my weight on the plunger of the Handy Packer and trying to tilt the plunger some, I was only able to get the grease to flow about an eighth of inch up into the bearing. Yes, I did have integral seal on the top.

So, I switched to the traditional hand packing method. I still could not get the grease to fully flow from one end of the roller to the other. So, I manually packed grease into the area of the end of roller near the integral seal.

Any thoughts on how to do this better? Would it have helped if the warmed up the grease some to make it easier to flow? Regarding repacking these bearings, I’m assuming that these bearings will need to first be cleaned with solvent to remove the old grease since I cannot get new grease to flow across the bearing to push out the old grease.

Thanks.

Brett
Columbus, IN

I used a Handy Packer with Aeroshell 22 too. Definitely tough to pass through the bearings. I ended up leveraging a 2*4 under my workbench with the Handy Packer as the fulcrum to drive in the grease. A friend of mine used his drill press to push on his Handy Packer plunger - not running, of course. Just some suggestions.

That's exactly right. It's counter-intuitive, but with preloaded tapered roller bearings with an integral grease seal, you need to tighten the axle nut really tight and then back off one or two flats. You don't want the seal to be able to rotate. I just did mine today and tightened the nut until I could only spin the wheel 1"-2" by hand. It seems too tight but I haven't had any excessive tire wear.

I use axle grease from Auto Zone and hand pack the bearings mushing the grease until it squeezes around the rollers. I turn it several times while applying the grease to make sure all the hooks and crannies are packed.

Grease goes a long way and we might be over-thinking maintenance required. The tapered-roller front wheel bearings on my 1987 Toyota pickup truck have never been greased since new and now have 160,000 miles. Airplane is slightly different, but not a whole lot...