What brand of wheel bearing grease do you recommend? Looking back at old threads, responses were all over the place. I have seen Mobil 1 Fully Synthetic grease both recommended and to avoid it. I was thinking synthetic myself, perhaps Mobil 1 or Amsoil.

What I have in my C3 now, for both front and rear, is MasterPro Hi-Temp Disk Break Bearing Grease that I picked up from O'Reilly. Definitely not my first choice in auto parts stores, but it was down the road. It has only been about 3 years and a little over 500 miles since I replaced all wheel bearings, races, and seals. I just happened to shake my wheels when the car was up on jacks recently and found that all 4 corners had some play. I am still in the process of pulling everything apart and inspecting the bearings, and what I have found on the left rear is the grease within the bearing went from red to black and the amount of play in the bearings is well above the recommended 0.001 to 0.008 inches. It is more like 0.016 right now. It was within specifications during install. I suspect the bearings wore down prematurely, due to poorly made bearings or crappy grease. I picked up a set of Timken bearings with the tools to replace them on ebay from a reputable seller. So I do not think the bearings are Chinese knockoffs. I want to believe the Timken bearings were not the problem, as they are also reputable. Maybe the grease is bad? Or maybe I messed up the installation on all 4 wheels.

 

Timken brand wheel bearing grease. The red stuff. The good stuff!
That said, bearings do bed in a bit. Thus loosening up.this is normal and why most of us shoot for .001 or as close as we can get to it in the rear. And up front do the spin and tighten, tighten while spinning front bearing adjustment. Not the crank it up, back it off method you might use on a Impala.

 

The grease you used is a lithium grease, common automotive grease. It should work fine for wheel bearings. The drop point may be suspect, and it may weep oil as Mobil1 seems to do more than others. However, the grease won't dilute and run out.

500 miles is nothing. I don't suspect the grease is/was your problem. More likely setup, especially the rears. Timken still makes good bearings, I have not had any issues with the 100's of them I used over the years.

Now bearing adjustment is possibly in the front. Take them apart clean the bearings, if they look good reuse them, if you see any issues or just don't want to deal with it, get new Timken's and a CR seal. Grease them and set them up correctly, most people don't know how to set front bearings. I have seen local corvette shops rock the wheel and call it good. If you need 002-008 in the back- and that is very wide, why wouldn't you in front?

Rear bearings are not special, High Performance, or high precision. They are common tapered roller bearings that are setup for low endplay and a press fit. Proper seating then dial in is needed to achieve the best results and with the supports off the car. While rear bearings can be done on the car and done faster, it is usually what shops are doing to beat the flat rate and not done very well most of the time. You get one shot at rear bearings. Wrong setup and you start over. Setup in the 001-008 range is an average job- at best. Shooting for the magical 002" endplay is not the best option, as I have shown many who have been in my shop. But even with a common shop level build the bearings are tighter than what you have. Yes, they will seat a little but nothing like what you have. I would bet that yours were loose to start and once loaded on the car opened up a little more. You need to start over and use new bearings. If you are not sure about the build, consider using a pro. I am not soliciting sales here and I sure don't refer rebuilders, this is just information for you to use to make your own decision.

I think the best example of what I'm saying is years ago. A guy on the C2 forum was too cheap to pay me to build his TA. He didn't want to ship them to another rebuilder. He wanted the best for cheap, good luck. I am not saying you are being cheap either, just how this story is. So, he buys the cheapest no name bearings he can find. More than likely they were Chinese junk. He picked my brain on how to set them up, I tried to help him, he just was in over his head and basing his decision on money. He assembled them and in no time he was calling me back because they opened up so much the wheels were loose. Instead of learning a lesson, he went cheap again, only this time I washed my hands of the whole thing and who knows how it went. He spent more money doing it 2 or 3 times than to just have it done right the first time.

Good luck you, it can be done. I use a surface grinder and lathe to dial in bearings, most do not. It can be done at home, just know what you're doing.

 

I belong to a vintage racing group. As far as I know, we all use the same grease for wheel bearings and U joints. Red Line CV2.

 

Take this with whatever grain of salt you want but when I was last at Timken in Cleveland, one of the Timken engineers told me they longer make many of their automotive application bearings and that was being done for them by a Japanese manufacturer now as they were focusing on industrial applications. That said the Timken stuff I have bought since then stated it was made in USA... Question is who owns and manages the US based manufacturer at this point? Or perhaps they just use the Japanese maker for their global products for some reason IDK.

I just did 3 out of 4 corners of my wheel bearings.. I used red High temp lithium grease. I used koyo bearings because thats what I found online that was decent and would get to my house on time for the install.

 

I did notice some weeping. Not a lot though. You say that Mobil 1 weeps a lot? Is there a grease that doesn't weep or break down over time? I would think that synthetic would be better, but maybe not if Mobil 1 weeps a lot.

 

Well, all I can add is all the Timkens I have ever used were stamped USA. I have just seen a differential bearing that was not etched USA so who knows.
I knew guys at Timken and Permatex in tech support, but they’re gone now as many of the experienced guys are today.
Koyo bought some of the Timken line years ago and they have good bearings.

 

I stopped using Mobil 1 15 years ago because of the oil weeping issue
I use different grease for different applications for wheel bearings I use either red and tacky or Timken red automotive grease which may be harder to find than the red and tacky

 

The bearings look good for both front and rear, so I plan to reuse them. I will see what the local auto parts stores have for grease.

 

Are the rear bearings still a press fit? while some will use or sell slip fit setups I never will. If someone wants slip fit I just turn the job down.

The bearings usually will get tweaked removing them, the shims in between them are probably not correct and won't be if new bearings are used.

If you don't do it right you will be doing them again.

 

So, what's the correct way to do them?

 

You can use the GM overhaul manual, you can use the many, most are bad, videos on YT, the way I do them is to first parallel grind all the mating parts and then I go through several of my own procedure dialing them in. 001-008 is correct but is it the best? I guess it depends on the experience of the builder.

 

Not much of a selection for grease in town between O'Reilly, Advanced, and Auto Value. I ordered Red Line, as I am wanting to try full synthetic and I like the specs on that. I now have between 0.002 and 0.003 play with smaller shims. Hopefully that works.