Skateboard Cleaner
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011How do I clean my skateboard bearings without lube?
My bones reds bearings need cleaning but I don’t have lube or anything, Is there any household products I can use. Like I heard gas works, Is that true?
These other answers are all great-…
If you want your bearings to roll like you replaced the balls with chunks of gravel.
If you want to do it the right way, you get a solvent such as mineral spirits or acetone (I recommend mineral spirits. Less nasty for youself and the environment. Other degreasers work too.) and pour a small amount into a widemouth plastic bottle like a Gatorade/Vitamin Water bottle. Gasoline works too, but it’s even nastier to work with than the other stuff. Remove the shields/seals (metal covers/rubber covers) from your bearing faces, then drop your bearings into the solvent-in-a-bottle. It helps to get them all onto a paperclip and loop the ends so that they stay together and are easier to take out when you’re done.
When you’ve gotten them in the bottle, close it up and shake vigorously, making sure that the solvent rinses through every bearing. After that, you can let them soak for a minute or two to make sure everything comes off.
Once that’s done, fish your bearings out of the bottle and lay them out on a paper towel or some other covering (don’t put them on a table. Mineral spirits/acetone are nasty, like I said before.) to let them air dry. If you’re really an overachiever, you can spin them by hand a few times once they’re dry enough to hold, so that the balls dry completely.
Once the balls are dry (yeah, laugh it up), you can use one or two drops of lube for each bearing, spin the bearings by hand a few times, then put the seals back on. If you don’t have skate lube, you can use lithium grease or another grease to lube them up. You might have this lying around for a garage door, door hinge, etc.
After this, you can close up your solvent and save it for the next time you want to clean your bearings. Don’t pour it down the drain, please.
Note: You =need= lube in skate bearings. To find out what happens if you don’t have lube, take two pieces of metal and scrape them against each other really hard for a few minutes. Not a pretty sight. Metal-on-metal contact needs lube.
Good luck, and play safe with this stuff.
Some more links: http://www.lushlongboards.com/workshop/how-to-clean-bearings-c-199_286.html
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