Bearing Floss - Ultra Turbo Cleaning

[eNons3nse]

So I've never really been the kind of person to fiddle with my bearings much.  I often just break them in and add a couple drops of thin lube when necessary.  if i'm having problems i clean them in mineral spirits, re-lube and go.  There are those times where you're throwing and some grit gets in your bearing and it starts squealing, but I'd just power through it and a few throws later it would be back to normal.  No biggie.

I recently got a yo-yo however and the stock bearing was giving me a lot of problems.  It was being really loud and acting strange when I got the yo-yo.  I cleaned it in mineral spirits, dried it and put it back in.  This time it was making an even stranger noise that was going in and out randomly.  I figured something really bad must be in there and it wasn't cleaning out easily.

I remember a friend of mine (King Felix) who used to fiddle with his bearings and yo-yos a lot showed me a while back that he put some thread through his bearing to clean it out.  I didn't want to dig through my art boxes to find thread and a needle so I figured dental floss would probably work just as well.  Then I remembered that I had this crazy floss from a long time ago when I had braces that would probably work amazingly well for what I was wanting to do.

It's called Super Floss from Oral-B.



It's basically individual strings of floss that have a stiff end for threading, then a fuzzy segment, then a regular floss segment.  So basically, what you've got here with the fuzzy part is a super thin and flexible pipe cleaner, and a stiff tip that makes threading into the little spaces in your bearing super easy.  So first I made sure the bearing was thin lubed really thoroughly.  Then I grabbed some of the stuff, threaded it through between the cage and outer race, twisted the bearing, pulled through a little floss, twisted, pulled through,......  a bunch of times.  This was the result.



As you can see, all that crap was in there, including some small metal shavings which I noticed also in the threading which probably happened during thread tapping.  None of this stuff came out by just vigorously washing in mineral spirits.  Since I did this a week ago, my bearing has been super smooth hasn't made a squealing noise once and always sounds super consistent.

Woot!  Go get some of this floss sukkaz!

[qpwoei12]

i tried this
AMAZING RESULTS
ought to be stickied
good job!

[King Felix]

Never thought to use floss, because most kinds are waxed and could make the problem worse. However, that floss seemed to work super well, and I played the yoyo he had the bearing in and it was really, really smooth. Most all of my bearings are in good shape right now so I shouldnt hafta do it, but next time I have an issue Ill definitely head for the floss instead of the thread.

And I agree, this should definitely be stickied.

[eNons3nse]

Butter.

I just wish there was enough space to thread it through by the inner race.

[tboy]

Would woven floss work? 

[sicyo]

That's awesome!

[eNons3nse]

Would woven floss work?  

i don't know what that is.  i've only used this stuff.  it seems kind of pointless unless you have this fuzzy floss.  like it wouldn't really pull much out of there.

btw, this fuzzy part isn't waxed and it doesn't appear to be flaky or anything, so i don't think it's likely that anything would come out in the bearing.  i guess i can't say that with 100% certainty.