Beekeeper
🍯Honey Monster🍯
Any advice on what grease to use for caged headset bearings?
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Unanswered Suitable grease for caged headset bearing?
- Thread starter Beekeeper
- Start date
The only critical area on a bike as far as type of grease is concerned is the freehub. Most bearings on modern bikes are cartridge ( sealed) types so most applications for grease on a bike other than the freehub are assembly. Any general purpose lithium grease is fine for that except where the surface is carbon and then you need a carbon assembly grease.
Different types of grease are made to cope with areas that are subject to heat , contamination or high loads. None of those are issues on our bikes except for water ingress......hence the use of a lithium grease.
Freehubs are different whether pawl or ratchet simply because they need greases that lubricate without causing clogging. These greases are typically a lot thinner ( pawls) or with high adhesion ( ratchets) properties.
So if its an ally bike you really only need 2 types of grease. A general purpose lithium grease for virtually everything except the freehub. For the freehub use DT Swiss general purpose grease for pawl type or DT Swiss Special purpose grease ( red in colour) for ratchets.
There is a need for a different grease ( e.g. SRAM Butter) if you are going to service forks/shocks. Follow the manufacturers recommendation for that.
Different types of grease are made to cope with areas that are subject to heat , contamination or high loads. None of those are issues on our bikes except for water ingress......hence the use of a lithium grease.
Freehubs are different whether pawl or ratchet simply because they need greases that lubricate without causing clogging. These greases are typically a lot thinner ( pawls) or with high adhesion ( ratchets) properties.
So if its an ally bike you really only need 2 types of grease. A general purpose lithium grease for virtually everything except the freehub. For the freehub use DT Swiss general purpose grease for pawl type or DT Swiss Special purpose grease ( red in colour) for ratchets.
There is a need for a different grease ( e.g. SRAM Butter) if you are going to service forks/shocks. Follow the manufacturers recommendation for that.
