'91 front wheel bearing grease help

[Rajun Cajun]

I am doing maintenance on my '91 325 and can't find any info on how to grease the front wheel bearings. I have the dust cover off and the bearings have a very small amount of grease inside. Any advice of type and procedure would be very appreciated.

TIA Andy J

[nrubenstein]

They are not supposed to be greased. If you want to do it, you need a bearing packer and to remove the whole assembly from the car.

[Rajun Cajun]

This is my first BMW, so big learning curve... rotor turns very free and smooth. I can see the wheel bearings inside and it appears there is some type of lubricate inside??

[nrubenstein]

This is my first BMW, so big learning curve... rotor turns very free and smooth. I can see the wheel bearings inside and it appears there is some type of lubricate inside??

What I mean is that they are not designed to be re-greased after they are installed. Also, it's a double row bearing, so greasing the outer one doesn't do much good. In my experience, the inner race tends to fail first. (I'm five for five on the inner race going before the outer, including a near catastrophic failure on the race car.)

[jlevie]

Correct, wheel bearings aren't meant to be re-greased. They are a unit replaceable item.

[Rajun Cajun]

So should I just leave them alone? Car has 67K original miles so doesn't get driven much. I want to take it on a short trip soon and just don't want any failures on the road. I'm used to American cars that you re-grease the bearings every so often.

Andy J

[nrubenstein]

So should I just leave them alone? Car has 67K original miles so doesn't get driven much. I want to take it on a short trip soon and just don't want any failures on the road. I'm used to American cars that you re-grease the bearings every so often.

Andy J

The truth is that 75% of the time, removing them will damage them. I wouldn't do tht without assuming that they would need replacement afterwards.

As long as they don't make any noise when spun with the brakes out, they should be fine. They also generally fail soft - that is they start making noise long before any real issues become apparent.