I have a manual explaining the front wheel bearing maintenance procedure, but I can't find anything on the rears. Do the rears need repacking or any maintenance?
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Original Post
Hooo boy- pull up a chair... The stock rear wheel bearings are single-row ball bearings, with dust shields. They seldom give much trouble, but the Factory, apparently to allow easier assembly, under-sized the outboard stub-axles, which SHOULD be a press-fit for the bearings. In fact, they are a tight slip-fit. This allows the very hard wheel bearings to "fret" against the mild steel axles, which eventually wears a groove in the axles. Replacing the wheel bearings in this case is a lot like bandaging a bullet hole....The fix is to increase the stub-axle diameter by 0.0005" (half-a-thousandth) which gives the proper press-fit. Hard-chrome plating, welding & grinding etc all have worked since this problem first showed up in 1976. Or, there are billet 4130-steel axles available that not only have the proper press fit, they are several times stronger than even repaired stockers.These are used in pro road-racing with no problems. Finally, there are conversions to tapered-roller bearings. This last requires total disassembly machining & some special parts. To get back to your question- no, greasing is not required since complete disasembly is needed for access to the rear wheel bearings.