How to clean skate bearings

Take advantage of this quarentine getting all your skate stuff and making a maintenance,a good example are the skate bearings. Skate bearings maintenance increases the durability and performance of the bearings so we are going to show you how to clean skate bearings.

This quarentine is affecting us too, so took it serously and we just made a video to show you how to open and clean your skate bearings, it doesn’t matter the brand or quality.

Find below the Youtube video with a detailed description of each step on how to clean skate bearings, the video is in spaniard, but you can find a complete description in english below in this post.

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Skate bearings maintenance, what do you need?

Skate bearings maintenance is so easy and there’s some tip that will make you save some money.

First, you will need a needle to remove the shield and the retainer (in case it can be removed).

Once the bearing is disassembled you will need some bearing cleaner, you can find it almost all the skate shops. If you can’t get it you can use gasoil (diesel), it is a great cleaner.

Before setting up the bearing you will need a bit of grease or oil, you can find this products in a skate shop. If you can’t you can use some refined grass or oil and it will work.

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1. Skate bearings, how to remove the shield

In one of our first articles we talked about the ABEC in the skate bearings and the different parts of a skate bearing. By the way in this case it doesn’t care the ABEC of your bearings, you can clean them anyway.

The first step to do a correct maintenance of your skate bearings is removing the shield, to do that we are going to show you first the different kind of shield that you can find in a bearing.

Sealed aluminium shield bearings

The shield is sealed to the outer race of the bearing. It can be removed, but it means breaking the shield and proabably the entire bearing.

Sealed shield aluminium bearings use to be cheaper and they deserve to be cleaned, once you breake them it’s time for a new ones.

Removable aluminium shield bearings

They are quite similar to the sealed shield bearings, but instead of sealed they have an small wire inside the outer race closing the shield.

Removing the shield is so easy with a needle, theres a two or three milimeters space where the wire is open.

Handling the needle in this point you will remove the wire and the shield easly. Remember to keep the shield and wire to close the bearing again once cleaned.

Removable plastic shield bearings

They have plastic shield (it use to be soft), there’s nothing closing the shield into the bearing, so the shield is easy to remove.

Using the needle you just need to handle a little bit, the shield goes out so easly, and its going to be closed that easy.

Shieldless skate bearing

Some skate bearings just have one shield or they don’t have shield at all. It just make the bearings more exposed, so they get dirty more quickly.

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2. Bearing retainer

The retainer is the part inside the bearing tha hangs the balls, it can be an aluminium retainer or a plastic retainer. When the bearing has no shield you can see the retainer and the balls inside.

Aluminium retainer

Aluminium retainers use to embrace the balls so you can remove it, you would break the retainer and you won’t set up your bearing again

If you have an aluminium retainer bearing, you should clean it without removing the retainer.

Plastic retainer

The plastic retainer has some holes to hang the balls. The bearings can be cleaned without removing the retainer, but if you want your bearing completely clean you shoud remove the retainer.

Use the needle to handle the retainer, it’s easy to be removed, the balls will keep between the outer and inner race, leave them there.

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3. Cleaning your skate bearings

Put some cleaner or gasoil in some bowl or similar, some bearing cleaner brands have their own bottle specially designed to clean the bearings.

Put the bearings insde and leave the between 4 and 6 hours, if you leave them overtime nothing is going to happen, so don’t woory ;)Por otro lado aprovecha para limpiar bien las jaulas y tapas del rodamiento.

At the same time you can clean the retainer and shields to have everything unpolluted.

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4. Putting grease or oil into the bearing

Once the bearings are clean and dry you can put one or two oil drops in the bearing.

It is not mandatory to put grease or oil. Moreover, if you don’t put anything your bearing will be faster because of the friction, but remember that oil and grease protects the bearing.

If you just want to lubricate a little bit your bearings use oil, if you want to protect instead of librucate you should use grease.

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5. Setting up your bearing

Its time to setting up your bearing to put the back in your wheels.

In the case of the plastic shield bearings you just need to put the shield in his place, and pushing a little bit with your fingers.

In the case of removable aluminium shield bearings you will need to close the wire, but it’s easier tha removing the shield.

PD: We want to thank the band ho made the song in this video: Himig – Trainjumpers.

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