Cycling UK Forum

I just push the grease in until theres a bit of resistance, then i figure theres enough in!

That's what i'll do next time. When I did it first time the grease came out all over the place- including between the casette and the hub body.

531colin wrote:

mark a. wrote:Does anyone have a picture of a hub with a drilled grease port? I'm struggling to visualise where it would go (not having done a cup and cone bearing for a few years) so that it allows grease into the bearings without messing up their nice smooth surface to run against.

Drill the centre of the hub between the 2 hub flanges that take the spokes. The grease runs left and right to the wheel bearings. Or possibly to the freewheel mechanism!

Ah, I see. Presumably this means that you need to take the wheel apart to do this? I'll need to learn wheel building before I give that a go.

mark a. wrote:
Ah, I see. Presumably this means that you need to take the wheel apart to do this? I'll need to learn wheel building before I give that a go.

I build the wheels first, then drill the hub with a regular battery drill. Easier than trying to drill a loose hub rolling about!

hamish wrote:
That's what i'll do next time. When I did it first time the grease came out all over the place- including between the casette and the hub body.

That conjures up an interesting image - you must have pushed it a bit!

you must have pushed it a bit

I guess I did!

Having given some thought to drilling my Campag Chorus hubs, I've decided not to. I know the idea must work, because the Record version - identical - have a drilling and cover as original.

These hubs come apart so easily, it isn't worth the effort.

Although they are cup and cone, it only needs a couple of Allen keys (and a spanner for the cassette carrier) to strip them completely. Five minute job.

Even adjusting them is easy and the QR doesn't affect them when you install the wheel. In fact, you can adjust them without releasing the QR.

So I won't bother, though it does have merit on more difficult hubs I'm sure.

If you are going to drill hubs, why not use oil? On the tandem I oil the hubs, pedals and BB every ride or once per week. Has lasted 30 years without stripping/adjustment. Oil is more mobile and more likely to reach it's target. There's less drag too. Obviously you need grease to assemble the bearing if they are cup and cone, but the oil will stop the grease drying out.

The bikes of our youths had little clips to cover these holes. I remember them well. But if you are going to the trouble of drilling a hole, why not put a nipple in and use a standard grease gun?

Why bother with a grease nipple

I just drill a 2mm hole and then use a syringe recycled from a used inkjet refill kit to squirt the grease in.

I generally regrease about once a year but have on occasion used 20/50 from an oil can - seems to work well with cassette hubs as the oil dosen't clog up the freehub and it all spins a lot free'er.

I've just drilled one of my bikes this weekend. I stripped the hubs down as normal, and then drilled the holes. Inside the rear hub is an extra (reinforcing) thickness of aluminium so I had to keep the hole away from that. There was a bit of swarf went into the hub too. So it must be better to do the modification at strip-down time rather than with the hub assembled. It should make the next service a lot easier though. I think that the hub would have to be full of grease to ensure it got to the bearings. For the rear in particular, that is a lot of grease.

If you are talking about a freehub design then within that "extra bit of aluminium reinforcing thickness" there is a hollow steel bolt which holds the freehub on. So certainly easier to drill elsewhere.

To go back to the beginning, I always grease and adjust my new hubs, ever since getting an LX hub that died in about 6 months, and which turned out to have hardly any grease in it.

Yes, it's a freehub. Glad I opened the hub up and looked inside before I started drilling. And to agree with other posts, all of my new hubs have been too tight and without much grease in them.

PaulS wrote:I've just drilled one of my bikes this weekend. I stripped the hubs down as normal, and then drilled the holes. Inside the rear hub is an extra (reinforcing) thickness of aluminium so I had to keep the hole away from that.

That might be Shimano's new-ish internal grease sealing feature, which has a 'grease-sleeve' over the axle of Deore and higher quality MTB hubs, so that these hubs can be packed with a more generous helping of grease, without it filling the whole internal volume of these fat-bodied hubs. It probably does make the bearings last better for the majority of people who don't maintain them, but looks to be a problem for those who want to modify for grease injection, as there's another thing to make a hole in. And unless you can ingeniously introduce a tube to connect the hole in the hubshell with a hole in this sleeve, you'll for sure have to fill the whole shell with grease before any of it gets to the bearings.

Digressing onto other componants, my Pace Research, when I had that, had grease nipples at the head-set & bottom-bracket
I'm sure that, if you bought a new one from Adrian & Duncan (company owners), their wheel-builder would drill/fit nipples to the chosen hubs before building wheels

Mindst you, that was in the early 90's

Mick F wrote:Which grease-gun is used to get grease into a tiny hole in the hubs?
I see that SJS has a couple but they seem to take a tube.

I have grease in big tubs, is there a small grease gun that you can refill that will reach a hole in a hub?

I tend to just slacken off the cones, & 'inject' grease into each side, via a 50mm Syringe previously filled (no needle, just the nozzle)

Once the initial filling of the syringe is done, it's a lot cleaner/quicker than smearing it in by hand