Use no grease INSIDE the freewheel...ever. It always does the sticky-pawls thing.
Use oil only for the inside, and use grease for the the hub-threads in the back.
As for grease: I always use the Phil Wood. Worth the money, and makes a mighty fine skin moisturizer to boot.

I grease the freewheel bearing balls sometimes, but OTOH it is pretty easy to just put a drop of oil on there every now and then.

I really like the Phil grease. It smells vintage to me. I would highly recommend the tubed versions of grease as it stays clean where as in the tub i find myself fishing out little dirty patches and throwing them away. So if the tube is more expensive it tends to cancel out some if you consider the zero waste and more precise meter of the lube you need.

I used to use Lubrimatic Marine Grease but kind of ended up disliking it. It worked well enough, but the oil tends to separate out from the soap after a while. I used to keep it in a grease gun, and every time I used it, the next day there'd be a little green pool of oil under the nozzle--oil that should be lubricating your bearings, not messing up your toolbox. I have not seen that happen with other greases I've tried like Finish Line or Park.

Thanks on the terminology
 

Prawls, thank you I didn't know that.

I also didn't know about grease and reinspection. I thought grease it once its good for a lifetime. So thats good to know too.

Whoops, pawls, no 'r'.

And also thanks on the light oil for the freewheel, I was going to use grease.

On my "good" bikes I use Phil. The tube lasts a couple of years of rebuilds. Although it used to be $4-$5 ea and its now up to $8
On "cheap" bikes or for the neighborhood magnas I use some cheap sticky blue stuff I have around. It's a gun tube and I just keep cutting it down when I can't reach the grease anymore.

Anti-seize is important, in my opinion, only when you have stainless screws threading into stainless nuts, or aluminum into aluminum. Otherwise, you're just applying the lube to the threads to make it thread smoothly and minimize the chance of water/salt contamination and corrosion.

Somewhere on the net there is an article by the people that make those bicycle frame couplers about galling and seizing and the proper grease to use to avoid it. I don't know enough about how those couplers are constructed and work to say for sure, but I infer that there must be some stainless part to part contact that can be troublesome. That's not a unique problem.

You're probably talking about S&S couplers, and DuPont Krytox grease (also sold as Finish Line Extreme Fluoro)

http://www.sandsmachine.com/ac_greas.htm

Here's the article desconhecido referred to:
http://www.sandsmachine.com/ac_greas.htm

This stuff from Finish Line says it's approved for the couplers, but apparently S&S hasn't updated their page yet:
http://www.finishlineusa.com/product...oro_grease.htm

edit: too late!

I still have one unopened tube of DuPont Teflon® Bearing Grease. I bought it super cheap on close-out from either Nashbar or Performance circa 1996, I think maybe $4/syringe.

I actually first heard about the Finish Line stuff from a discussion over at CandlePower Forums about the best lube for threads and o-rings on high-end LED flashlights. I think I paid about $10 for a syringe from Amazon.

EDIT: By the way I should clarify that I'm in no way advocating using this stuff for bearings or even common fastener threads. I don't think it's waterproof, and way too expensive anyway.

There is no such thing as bike specific grease, it's all repackaged auto or machine grease. The advantages of synthetic is that it doesn't get way thick in really cold temps. I've been using Citgo Marine grease (the blue stuff) for years now. Get it at Autozone for about $3.50 per grease gun tube. Never had a problem with it, and I've never seen the oil separate out of it. If you've got money to burn, go ahead and buy the bike boutique grease -- while you're at it, buys some special boutique air for your tires as well.

hahaha! Will it stay in the tubes longer? I bet it makes me roll faster!

I'm about to do the spring checklist on my bike before I start riding this year so thanks for the grease info everyone. I've never done them so the hubs are on the list.

I'd say if Park or Phil Wood buy grease from the same refiners who make the automotive stuff, they probably spec the best viscosity and additive packages available for bike-specific applications.

Bike grease is typically one viscosity grade lower than automotive, btw.

I bought a tube of the stuff and it is starting to separate, although it's about a year old and the tube labels no longer say quite the same thing, so maybe they changed it.

To be fair, the repackagers for the most part have at least done the legwork of figuring out for you which of the thousands of different formulations and grades available on the market are best for bike applications. So, while you can probably do as well or better for less money than the tube of stuff from the LBS, an unsophisticated user can certainly do a *lot worse* by choosing an inappropriate lubricant. And some of them do claim that their stuff is a custom formulation (doesn't mean they have to own a grease factory...I'm sure there are plenty of companies that will work with you for the right price).


I've got a tube of Mystik JT-6 that I got from Walmart for about that price (I think they're owned by Citgo now, actually). It looks really promising. Has great water washout resistance, is supposed to be very sticky, and the temperature range looks adequate for my purposes (rated to 0F, but I rarely ride in weather that cold). I'm going to try it soon on some hubs that I need to service.

The other advantage of synthetic oil-based grease is that it has about four times more film strength than mineral oil-based greases.

If your cup and cone bearings undergo bearing drop, perhaps due to a momentary overload, the balls have to slide sideways as well as roll. That's one instance where a higher film strength would seem to pay dividends.

With perfectly adjusted bearings, run at moderate loads, any grease should be fine. When things go out of adjustment, perhaps because they're new, or maybe the axles flex due to an overload, then synthetic pays off.

For my pedals, screws, metal to metal contact points I just use a tub of really cheap Axle Bearing Grease that I have laying around. Works really good for open bearings too. Is it thick enough just to set the bearings in, tighten the cones back down and go.

True enough. Grease is formulated to give satisfactory lubrication at certain loads and temperatures. I'm sure that this is major issue with powered vehicles, especially aerospace stuff. I'm not a trained engineer, but I guessed that bike bearings are not under any more load than boat trailer bearings -- probably less. The marine grease I've been using has worked out just fine, at a fraction of the cost of boutique grease.