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Thought bearing packers were a gimmick until I tried one on a CRJ main wheel last Tuesday
I always packed wheel bearings by hand. Palms full of grease, working it in from the big end. Old school. A guy I work with kept telling me to try the packer in the crib. I figured it wasted grease and took longer. Last Tuesday I had a CRJ main wheel due and decided to just try it. Took me maybe 90 seconds to load it up and crank the handle. Grease came out the small end clean. No air pockets, no guessing. I cut my packing time in half and used less grease than my hand method. The manual for the CRJ says pack by hand if no packer is available, but honestly the packer did a better job than I ever did. Now I want to know if anyone else switched over or if I'm late to the party on this one.
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briannguyen8h ago
Something nobody talks about with packers is what grease you're running through them. I grabbed the same tub of Aeroshell 33 I always use and it went through fine, but a buddy of mine tried his with some thicker stuff in cold weather and it was a fight the whole way. The packer doesn't care about your hand technique, but it sure cares about grease temp and how stiff the batch is. Cold shop in January versus a warm hangar in July is gonna feel like two different tools. So before guys write them off after one bad try, check if it's the packer or the grease giving them grief. You're not late to the party, you just showed up with the right grease and finally found out why the old guys in the crib keep theirs locked up.
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