New Bearings
 

Hi,

I have just bought a set of new Team Blue Star bearings for my car. Do I need to remove the shields and re-lube before I run. If so how do I remove the shields?

Cheers,

Mossie

Team Blue star bearings suck. If your bearings are shot buy more OE bearings or send the dough on some nice ceramics or something.

seeing as this is about bearings how do u get the shields of teflon TC3 bearings to clean em

An Exacto or a straight pin works well....same for rubber and metal shielded:cool:

I recommend taking the internal sheilds off your bearing permantly. i.e. the bearing sleves that are inside of diff housings I have taken one side of the sheilds off and have not put them back since. This does two things, first it decreases the friction on the bearings and it makes them easier to clean and re-lube. It does have one down side. If you don't take care of them they can get junk in them. I take my bearigns out after every race weekend and clean and re-lube them, I do this because I have had a bearing failure once during a race and I vowed to never let it happen again.
I do recommend also in ceramics if you are serious about racing. They last forever(If you maintain them well) and they have less resistance than other types of bearings. Also they weigh less (so it reduces the rotational mass which in turn helps speeds. Hope this little lesson helps you on your next bearing purchase. Oh and about blue star bearings, they are fine just re-lube often and clean regulaly and your bearings should last a long time.
Thanks for listening,
Stephen <><

Bearings
 

I suggest you check out Avid Bearings. He is a hardcore racer and understands what's needed. We run them in all of our cars and trucks. We have never had one fail or bind up yet. Even in 1/8th scale!

www.avidrc.com

btw, the prices are awsome!

Re: Bearings
 

Do these bearings need to be cleaned and re-lubed before use?

That is up to you. Most of us hardcore racers do because we "think" it will make the car faster! You would be just fine running them as is. I would suggest cleaning them on a regular basis to keep them as free as possible.

David Joor at Avid is the bearing master. I'm sure he could tell a few tricks as well.

I also think that the Avid rc bearings are worth the money.

The bearings I got from them came in a tube, so I just sprayed some motor cleaner in the tube, closed it up and shook it till all the thick greese had come out. After that, I just put some normal rc lube in and they worked great.

Goto http://www.avidrc.com/help to see all the info on removing seals and stuff like that.

It isn't ever required to clean out a new bearing, in most cases I recommend not doing that. The grease that comes in the bearings act as a protection layer for catching dust before it gets into the race. If you are running electric sedan and the track is clean, I would remove 1 seal from the wheel bearings and face the no shielded sides towards each other when in the hub. On the drive line I would remove all the shields and I would remove the grease and add 1 drop of thin bearing oil. You need to keep up with the 1 drop of oil in each bearing after each race day. Your going to go through bearings like that though.

In offroad, unless you are at a stock national, it won't matter if you try to pimp them out. Your tires are always spinning in the first place. Better to have smooth bearings in a offroad car than to have a slightly freed up drivetrain that may possibly lock up on you.

Another trick is just to blow out a bearing (metal) with the shields on with an air compressor, this will get the majority of grease out but leave enough in there for lube and protection.