I just got my first Chief, and I’d like to know if you all normally lube the bearings when you get a new yoyo? I’ve been throwing a drop of thin lube in my new throws, but if the manufacturers already do this, I’ll stop.
Id assume that they do, but it should still play fine with a little extra drop.
I don’t generally put lube in a new yoyo unless it sounds like a chainsaw or vibes a bunch, but the standard drop shouldn’t hurt if you want to put some in anyway. I can assume you know how to apply lube, right?
I’m not totaly sure if they do or not. Shooting them an email would get the info right away.
A long time ago all bearing came with lube even in yoyos designed for unresponsive play. Because if a bearing sits around long enough with no lube it could develope rust, depending on the enviroment. Lots of people buy two of each yoyo they buy for collecting purpose’s. One never leaves the box. If they send out totaly dry bearings at this point ( I don’t know if anybody does or not.) it would mean many collector yoyos in the future will have rusted out bearings. Kinda’ went off topic there. 
Ok, thanks for your replies. If no one knows of an industry standard on whether or not everyone pre-lubes their new bearings, then I’ll keep throwing a tiny drop in there.
Or I could be really OCD about it and scrub the bearings on all my new yoyos. 
lol yeah you could. Or you could just pm YYE and see if Andre knows… Or google it… Idk though good luck!
Nah, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I was asking cause I just don’t wanna do anything that could be bad to new bearings.
I know. I’m the same way. And I don’t have any extras just lying around, so I try to be careful.
Different manufacturers I think send new throws out with bearings in different states of ‘lubed’. Typically I think the stock CLYW bearings come cleaned (I’m not 100% sure on this), but if you’re in any doubt a cursory search of this section of the forums should inform you. However, what I can tell you is that cleaning a bearing in an appropriate fashion (there are a million and one threads on this) but basically with some compressed air and good quality acetone will not harm a bearing in any way - new or not. If you’re in any doubt about how a bearing arrived in a yoyo then giving it a good clean is absolutely fine, and there are many people who do this as a matter of course because people like their bearings to perform in different ways. For example Sniffy-yo, who is already missed, championed Dry-play lube and tutorials for this can be found both on the Sniffy-yo website as well as youtube. Many people play their bearings dry and clean, which will give a good degree of performance but reduce the lifetime of the bearing. A single drop of thin lube is also common however I would say that a lot of people who want a long spinning unresponsive yoyo will say that a ‘drop’ is too much lube, and that a few pinheads worth is enough.
Finally, in order to clean a bearing from new should not require deshielding which is an ideal scenario, because once a bearing is deshielded it is more prone to being clogged from dust and dirt. However, in order to apply minute amounts of lube or the Dry-play lube a deshielded bearing is really a must, at least on one side.
Hope this is useful, but as a frame of reference I think (again pure speculation) that most people, certainly not all, but most would play a new CLYW throw stock, without altering the state of the bearing.
See
for more advice!
No doubt, I’m in the same boat…
Hey Joe! I know I need to get some of that dry lube. That raises one of my concerns: What if they (the manufacturers) throw some dry lube on and I throw some YYF thin lube on? I’m not sure what kind of chemical reactions are taking place, if any. Is it potentially bad?
Edit: And yes, I have seen a few videos on how to clean bearings. I think I’m good on that.
I don’t think any companies routinely ship bearings with dry-play. And I don’t think you have to get this - I wouldn’t like to publicly advocate one lube over another, the reason I discussed this is because all ‘liquid’ lubricants will play/be applied in the same way, but that is not the case for dry-play. But this does illustrate why cleaning first may be the answer… There will be no reactions or anything bad if you mix these things though. Both these things are really pretty inert I would imagine.
Ok cool.
Just for the heck of it, I put a drop in the Chief bearing and every other hop I could hear something grind. I cleaned it out, put another drop of lube in and it sounds fine now. So, off this one test, I either a) shouldn’t have put any liquid lube in or b) should’ve scrubbed the bearing to being with.
Though my other new yoyos did nothing of the sort. Oh well, I guess it’s not a big deal to clean em out first.
nope 
but its good you did it eventually! I just cleaned my first bearing and now it works pretty well for me! Better than it used to, at least.
They should say if they don’t lube them. For instance Loop900 page on YYE.
Also a drop of thin lube is to much without compressed air.
To lube your bearing: Get your bottle and take the top off, get a pin and dip it in the lube, then touch it to a few balls on your de shielded bearing. Repeat once or twice.
Cool, thanks guys I think I’m all set.
Clean the bearing then lube it. The bearings are often pre lubed but not always, better to be safe.
Do not get dry lube. It’s for advanced bearing modifiers only. Use some YYJ YYF or OD lube. Male sure it is thin.
TX dry lube is easy, just mess witth it a bit.
If you can take the shields off you can do it…
But if you do it wrong. Your just trying to get sales 
Seriously? It’s really pretty easy to use. No more difficult than applying normal lube in the correct proportions really.