Low drag Wheel Bearing Oil

[Dave9]

Your magic bullet is unlikely to matter enough. Gear oil too thick to use on wheel bearings? Ridiculous. Find some other way to gain more, but if you want to know the truth, take whatever you are using and just add some lighter weight oil to it, this is not at all a difficult thing to chase a rainbow and cause rapid bearing wear.

viscosity

 

[Jetronic]

How hot do the bearings get, what's their mean diameter and how fast do they turn? roller bearings need higher viscosity than ball bearings in the same size and application.

Chances are you're looking at a 75W-140 for performance applications, unless you are willing to inspect and increase bearings regularly.

 

[ryan_brown00]

I ended up going with the oil from @High Performance Lubricants . Our first race of the season is in a month so I will get to try it at a 1/4 mile. I will let yall know how it works out.

 

[Kestas]

If you want to reduce wheel bearing drag, you're focusing too much on the lubricant. Compared with the raceway, an incredible amount of drag comes from the seals. Commercially produced wheel hub units have 4 seal lips on each side. If you've ever turned a new hub unit by hand you'd appreciate the resistance hubs have.

Then there's ceramic balls for the ball bearing designs for low rolling resistance....

 

[ryan_brown00]

These hubs do only have 1 seal per hub, as the outside of the hub has an oring and a cap. Another thing is ceramic bearings are illegal in the class of cars we run. The older bearings and hubs we used to run, the seal was on the bearing, and it caused massive amounts of drag.

 

[AndyB]

I’ve used Superlube oil in go kart ball bearing hubs. Ball bearings don’t share as much load as a tapered roller bearing but it worked great on asphalt and dirt. Washed them out and ultrasonic cleaned them after every racing event. Sure lowered the drag considerably.

 

[racin4ds]

Kart racing here as well, our bearings get a custom blend of oil every race day after thoroughly cleaning. We use a mix of MMO/TriLube. Thin but protects very well. Never seen a bearing get hot or show above normal wear.

 

[srfdude]

Redline superlight shockproof if you really want to use oil. Wheel bearings need high pressure boundary lubrication. Marvel mystery oil is far too light and just a garbage product all around.

I've never heard of a wheel bearing that uses oil, but I'm also not into dirt racing. Very interesting.

Hmm obviously you have lots of experience with MMO to put a strong label like "garbage" on it. I mean no one with no experience would leap to such a conclusion, right?

I use a qt. each 100 gal. tank of unleaded, cheap Mex. gas in my twin 454 fishing boat. No longer have carb problems, due to stale gas. So garbage, not so much.

 

[ryan_brown00]

I haven't had time to post this lately, been super busy, but I have been super happy with the High Performance Lubricants stuff. Been running it all season, and have only had good luck with it. I tend to change the oil every 1-2 races, but it seems to be holding up well, the only issue is with the metal shavings in the oil, but that is more of the fault of the hubs and bearings and not the oil. No burnt oil or anything like that. We have won 4 out of 7 features so far this year, so it seems to have helped slightly, there is just no good way to quanitify the difference we have seen, because it could be a multitude of outside factors.