Bearing won’t stay unresponsive

Yo-Yo Mods and Maintenance
1

Ok, I have zero idea what I’m doing wrong here and I’m hoping y’all can help.

I have a few yoyo’s that have gone responsive and I’ve taken the bearings out, cleaned them with 100% acetone or lighter fluid. Dried them, put a TINY amount of lube on them. And no matter what they are still responsive.

I am following the instruction on this site to 100 and I am not sure what’s wrong?

5-10 minutes in either acetone or lighter fluid
5 minutes to dry
Spin on a chopstick and let dry again and use canned air to get everything out.
Pinhead amount of THIN lube and spin to distribute

Here we are. Has anyone had anything similar happen to them or have any advice?

3

Sorry for the ninja edit didnt realize you were using canned air, figured you might have water build up in a compressor tank from not using an air dryer but canned air solves this

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4

Yea idk what’s wrong.

Putting it in 20 minute soak of acetone to see what’s up. But idk what I’m doing wrong

5

Hmmm… Could be the lube. Some brands seem to make the bearing responsive for me, at least for a bit, regardless of how little I put on.

Or the bearings are jacked and there’s prob no fixing them.

How do they sound when spinning (dry and lubed)? Loud or quiet? Do they spin very long (again, dry and lubed)?

May be worth trying them out dry after cleaning. Can help narrow things down.

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6

Spin great low noise.

I’m wondering if I need to let it dry longer

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8

Yea I think it may have been that. I appreciate it!

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9

For my dsk bearings…

With Acetone I’ve been letting them sit soaking for much longer. Overnight sometimes.

I spin them dry on a stick and then air dry for a couple min.

I play them dry for a bit…. They’ll get a bit noisy and then the pin drop of thin lube goes in.

Seems to work pretty well but I think it’s the longer soaking that really helps.

As someone said above too…. Right out of the bath they should be almost silent and spin for at least 15 sec with a flick of the thumb.

10

Yea I don’t think I was soaking them long enough. I did two for 10-15 minutes. Let them dry for a way longer time, just a little lube and they seem to be better.

Only thing I can guess is they weren’t clean enough after only a few minutes in the acetone

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11

Are they responsive after cleaning, but before lubing?

If so, it’s probably your lubing method, or your lube. What are you using and how are you applying it?

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12

I should try that.

I’m using thin lube, and putting on a tiny drop with a needle

13

check the bearing seat is free of any debris, even the slightest residue.

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14

I’ve also had a ton of trouble with unresponsive bearings very quickly becoming semi responsive. I’ve tried most of the suggestions here and still have trouble with it.

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15

Been there myself. I had a pile of 5 or 6 bearings that I had cleaned at one point and were still not spinning well. What I ended up doing was leaving my problem bearings in lighter fluid for several days, then finger spinning them on a pencil(try applying some off-axis force while finger-spinning them, sometimes there’s some caked on grease or dirt this can help break up), drying, and then repeating the process except with acetone. A couple bearings required a second round, one even a third*.

Then I run them dry, except for the occasional super noisy bearing.

  • brand new bearing from a boutique bearing shop with questionable marketing, think it had too much dry lube from the factory. They are good bearings though. They are the smoothest and quietest bearings I have since cleaning them (I have 3). They’re quiet even running them dry.
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16

I soaked mine in acetone for like 20 minutes and the lightly lubed.

Also read in here they can come out slightly responsive and to throw hard and let spin to distribute everything and that seemed to work for now lol

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17

My first recommendation would be to clean them without putting the lube on to see if that works. Another thing I would try would be to try lighter fluid or mineral spirits. I have noticed that sometimes brands claim that something is 100% acetone without it really being so. Using lighter fluid or mineral spirits would fix that problem. Another thing to realize is that sometimes bearings just go bad. Honestly, I have about a 60% survival rate once a bearing becomes gritty and responsive. It helps to be preventative. If you clean bearings before they get bad, they will last longer.

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18

Just curious. Why lighter fluid over acetone? What’s the benefit

19

Acetone has more of a chance of having another chemical that is bad for a yoyo bearing than lighter fluid does.

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20

I’ve only tried lighter fluid, but haven’t actually used it in a while. These days, my routine consists of this:

When a bearing gets noisy, I sit it on the end of a chopstick and spin it out with canned air to see if there was just some debris in there that needed to be blown out. If it sounds quieter, I stick it back in and go back to throwing. If not…

I put a little bit of lube in. I take a sewing needle and dip it in the lube bottle so it gets coated, then rub it along the inside of the bearing. After that, I spin it with my finger a bunch of times until it quiets down. Then…

I use the paper cleaning method (skip to like 3 minutes in to see what I’m talking about). I do this after lubing because it seems to pick up more gunk as opposed to doing it dry and the paper gets some of the excess lube out if you go too heavy.

Anyway, I’ve been doing this regularly for a while now and all of my bearings are running smooth, quiet, and unresponsive as ever. The only time I use lighter fluid is if all this fails.

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21

What do you mean

23

Why is lighter fluid so good? What does it contain that’s so positive at cleaning?