Originally Posted by
Ronsonic
The traditional S-A hub advice was a little light oil, often.
Older bikes have oil ports for the BB and hubs mostly because grease was not as good then as it is now. Grease is not just "thick oil" or any other naturally occurring substance it is an engineered product with a lot of science behind it. That science didn't exist 50 years ago. Now that we have it, I prefer grease for hubs and BB. I don't have enough recent S-A experience to make a suggestion for those. But for conventional hubs and BB, I say use a modern lithium or marine grease.
Actually for their modern greased hubs SA recommends use of a SAE 00 viscosity grease which is basicallly a thick liquid which can flow back when forced out of contact areas. I believe Shimano IGH grease is similar and have read of damage to Shimano hubs which are greased with thick grease. Shimano now offers an oiling kit for their internally geared hubs and per recommendations from their tech support suggests its use on heavily loaded and high mileage use hubs.
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Gear Hubs Owned: Rohloff disc brake, SRAM iM9 disc brake, SRAM P5 freewheel, Sachs Torpedo 3 speed freewheel, NuVinci CVT, Shimano Alfine SG S-501, Sturmey Archer S5-2 Alloy. Other: 83 Colnago Super Record, Univega Via De Oro
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