A good thick coat helps to hold everything in place for the reassembly. Once everything is clean, load the outer race with grease. The key is to make sure all of the cleaning agent is removed. I used dawn dish detergent and rinsed everything thoroughly. Some prefer a grease cutter like kerosene. There are a few methods for cleaning everything. Take the dirty, greasy ball bearings, plastic cages, and inner/out races and clean them. However, if you break it, you’ll be replacing the entire bearing again. The plastic isn’t strong, but it has some pliability to it. It’s a bigger cage, and will require a bit more force to pull it through the top. Repeat removing the ball bearings for the bottom cage.
The easiest way to remove the cage is to rotate it 90 degrees and gently pull it out of the top. On the newer style cages, once the first ball bearing comes out, the cage falls out of place and the rest of the ball bearings come out easily. The older style is a hair larger, and once you remove all the ball bearings, it will require a bit of gentle force to remove. There are two styles of ball bearing cages for the top cage of the S14/S15. Take your screwdriver and gently pry out the balls of the bearing assemblies. I also used my bench vise opened wide enough, but it was hard to catch the race without an extra set of hands. I found a scented candle has a wide enough circular opening to support the hub without the race’s shield getting in the way. It’s best to set the hub up straddling something. A tip for S14/S15 hubs, the bottom race has a pressed on metal shield. Brand new bearings can be tight to tap out, but with enough gentle force, they’ll release. Next, set the bearing up so you can knock out the inner races.
The first step is to gather your bearing assemblies in a clean work station. I will routinely refer to the outboard side of the hub/bearing as the top and inboard side as the bottom. If you are using used, junker hubs, it’s a very good idea to repack them. In some of the used hubs I took apart, the grease had become runny and a good portion of it had left the bearing compared to the brand new ones. The factory grease is decent, but it’s not the best quality. It’s a high quality grease with a high viscosity that is resistant to channeling and is sustainable at high operating temperatures. For this article, Neo Synthetic HP800 grease was used. You can use any kind of grease for this job, just use a high quality wheel bearing grease. These are partially sealed, but can be disassembled to repack with higher quality grease. Nissan wants you to purchase an entire hub assembly for the front bearings, and a separate carrier for the rears. In the sport compact world, most manufacturers offer there bearings up prepressed into carriers or hubs. It’s a service life issue in some cases, such as utility vehicles. There are multiple reasons to repack bearings. It can be very tedious and time consuming, but the key is to stay organized and have an efficient layout of your work station to expedite the cleaning and greasing of the individual components. Repacking wheel bearings is not a difficult task.