i used to have a fast 201 yoyo just to do some simple tricks then i was looking to see what the best yo yo on the market was so i bought a dark magic 2. but i just bought it a few days ago and i put in the speed bearing and it only slept for about 40 seconds and was unresponsive. so i read online that when they ship theyre yoyos they have old lube on them from the factory. so i put on some new THIN lube and when i tried the yo yo again it was MORE responsive 
:o ??? ??? ???. and i couldnt get it to sleep for more than 45 seconds even after 2 hours of use. what should i do? is it broken? (please dont say that i have to just throw it straight, i know. even if its a great throw i get 45 seconds max.) thats not normal rite??! cuz i read online about people getting 3+ minutes of sleep time
3 minutes would be a stretch.
Adding more lube has made it more responsive. Thatâs normal. You just need to clean the bearing, put one drop of THIN lube on it, spin it around a while, and either a) use compressed air to blow out the excess lube; or b) play it heavily (gyro flops work well for some reason) to break in the lube and make it properly unresponsive.
There are more threads and instructions on cleaning a bearing than I care to think about, but the basic gist is: get a solvent (mineral spirits, acetone, and lighter fluid are the most popular because they leave the least residue) and agitate the bearing in the solvent. Take it out, spin off as much solvent as you can and then let it dry completely before lubing it.
It should go without saying that all solvents require safety and care in their usage, acetone moreso than the others. Do it in a well-ventilated area using surfaces and containers that arenât susceptible to dissolving with the solvent (when in doubt, use glass or metal).
Once the bearing is clean and lubed (or not; you can run it dry if you like) and then broken in, it should be properly unresponsive. The 3-minute sleep times were probably achieved with a DRY bearing.
so now that i added more lube i just need to keep using it until it becomes unresponsive?
and what about the spin time i cant even get 1 minute!
If you re-read my post, I recommended cleaning it first, and then re-lubing it.
If it had factory lube and you just added MORE lube, itâs going to take a nutty amount of time to break it in. I recommend cleaning instead.
Also: worry less about sleep times. Who cares if it sleeps for 3 minutes if youâre still working on getting through Atom Smasher? 
Solve problems as you need to. I think solving the responsiveness problem is important (some tricks are exceedingly difficult with a responsive yoyo) but beyond that⌠donât throw a sleeper and time it⌠just work on tricks!
Listen.
The more you add to it.
The less spin you will get.
Clean the bearing out, so its free of lube
Use, the tip of a needles amount of lube after its clean.
Then you will get good spin time
thanks guys. Now, lets clean it.
Let me lay things out:
New players need to calm themselves down about massive spin times. Great spin times comes from well broken in bearings by a player who has developed a GOOD THROW. The fact that I can get a 4-5 minute sleeper on a DM2 proves that my hard work pays off.
New players do not seem to understand that lube is done to help prolong the life of the bearing. It also helps prevent galling, which can(but often doesnât) happen when you have the metal balls running on the metal races. A very small amount of lube will prevent this. New players seem to think adding MORE lube is a good thing. Itâs not. Even thin lube has viscosity and that will slow down your bearing.
When you add lube, you WILL increase responsiveness. Period. I donât care how little you add, this is just a fact of life. BUT, you can control this by using as little lube as possible. By doing this, the yoyo itself will be performing in a manner that will overcome nearly all of this responsiveness. How much lube do you need? Remove the shields, dip a needle in the lube, touch that drop from the needle on a ball or two and youâre done. Donât want to remove the shields? Half to a quarter of a drop will do it.
I recommend cleaning bearings. Get them free of lube so you can control whatâs being put in there. Now you are the boss. Remove the shields, soak them in 100% pure acetone(thatâs what I prefer), remove, drain, spin dry. Lube or treat as desired.
Another issue with new players is:
Letâs lube the heck out of my bearing. Oh, now I gotta clean it? Oh, I donât have any of that stuff, Iâll just use whatever I feel like and hope for the best, it will be OK. They put themselves in situations that say âfailureâ.
I had a guy NEAR ME who was whining about his bearing, and I laid out the offer to clean it for him but he always had some excuse and never got the bearing cleaned. He traded the yoyo away rather than do some maintenance stuff.
Skill toys demand and require patience. Stop rushing. Ask, learn. If youâre gonna rush in, at least do what this poster did and ASK questions. You need to learn this sooner or later anyways, so might as well be sooner.
Lastly, to heck with spin times. If youâre new, just get through a trick and be happy. The rest comes with time, practice and dedication. Things will gradually improve. Your throw will improve, your sleep time will improve. Your accuracy will improve and your sleep times will become better still, because youâre throwing stronger and straighter.
Look, getting 5 minutes of sleep time on a DM2 is not a big deal. But, what am I gonna do with a 5 minute sleeper? I can get through a 20-45 second combo, thatâs all I need at best is that much spin. Watching a 5 minute sleeper bores me to death. I got better things to do with my life.
If youâre in the Sacramento area, Iâll clean your bearing for you. Iâll lube it or optionally Dry Play treat it at your request. Iâll show you before, after and HOW to clean a bearing.
If you still need help, ask.
Remove shields.
Soak and agitate in 100% acetone for 5 minutes(1 minute shake, 5 minute soak).
Remove from acetone to paper towel, let drain 30 seconds per side.
Place bearing on WOOD chopstick and spin dry. Flip over, spin more.
Lubing is then optional. If so, dip needle in thin lube, touch that drop from needle on 1-2 balls in bearing. Spin.
If treating using Dry Play, contact me for more advice. Skip the above lube step if Dry Play treating.
Re-shield if desired, replace bearing in yoyo, re-assemble yoyo. Go play.
Done. Enjoy.
(I prefer 100% acetone. Others prefer mineral spirits or lighter fluid)
I have very good results with YYJ Speed bearings and cleaning them.
thanks man, i really appreciate the help. ur right on the money in explaining the way i am rite now. iput way too much lube and i now have to clean it. but i KNOW ill screw it up. i wish someone can optimize my yoyo for me but i live in chicago. any suggestions?
When in doubt, just run it dry. Bearings are relatively cheap (unless youâve got some of those fancy ceramic bearings).
I remember, I put so much lube on my DM2 bearing that the response pads fell out⌠Lesson learned 
âi KNOW ill screw it upâ is possibly the most important statement youâre going to have to re-evaluate if you want to get into this hobby.
There is maintenance involved, and you will need to know how to do it. Bite the bullet, clean the bearing. The great thing is that if you screw up cleaning and/or re-lubing the bearing, you can do it again. Itâs stainless steel⌠youâre not going to âbreakâ it by cleaning it improperly unless you ignore every instruction youâve seen thus far.
Just clean it. If it doesnât work, clean it again. Then again if you need to. But learn how to do this and other routine maintenance (changing pads or applying flowable silicone response, for example). Itâs a part of the hobby you wonât be able to avoid forever, so just get to it!
ye or ne?
ne
^^^ This, along with Studio42âs advice, will help you countless times throughout your yoyoing career. Cleaning bearings and lubing them properly is extremely important, so the sooner you learn how to do it, the better.
Iâve over-lubed many bearings in my time with yoyos, so donât be embarrassed or ashamed about it. Weâve all done it. Weâve all cleaned them out afterwords and have had great results, too!
All you need to do is take a small glass jar and put 1" or so of Acetone, Lighter Fluid, or Mineral Spirits in it. Then, take the shields off your bearing (very easy to do with a pin or needle) and plop it in the jar. Once it is submerged, shake/rattle it around a little and let it sit for a few minutes (5 is what most agree on).
When youâve done that, take the bearing out of the jar and let it dry for a long time. You can use compressed air to dry it quickly, but I prefer just setting the bearing down on a paper towel and letting it sit for 12-24 hours.
Once the bearing is dry, pop it in your yoyo and play with it! Itâll be completely free of all lubricants and should spin for much longer than yours is currently. If it sounds too loud for you, take a tiny amount of thin lubricant (YoYoJam Thin Lube, YYF Thin Lube, or One Drop V4M are preferred and perform the best) and apply it to 3-4 balls of the bearing. The best way to do this is with a pin or needle. Just dip the tip of the pin/needle into the lubricant and touch it lightly to the balls of the bearing. Any more lubricant than that will get you right back where you started.
Good luck and have fun! Cleaning bearings is just a part of everyday yoyoing and you should get comfortable with it as soon as you can. Once youâve done it once or twice, youâll have a feel for it and wonât need to stress about it ever again!
Been throwing for a few years now, and I never lube. Why bother, I tried it, tried several top lubes and several âspecialty lubesâ all they ever did was cut my spin time. There is no way a bearing that has a liquid lube applied to it can spin as fast as a perfectly clean and dry bearing its an impossibility. Im not nreally familar with the dry treatment type lubes so I cannot speak from experience about those.
Clean bearing in 99% Isopropanol alcholol, then hand spin them till they are dry on a chopstick or pencil and put back in yoyo. I can tell a clean bearing by the way it sounds.
If the bearing is particularliy stubborn, I have a can of compressed air I will shoot throught the bearing while holding on said chopstick.
Our bearing dont see any real abuse, they live in a very clean and controlled enviroment compared to many bearings. Perhaps if you live in very humid or really super dry enviroments lubing is more of a requirement, but I think for most of us, its really not even neccesary.
Its just one more thing yoyoârs like to obsess over.
Sometimes is the correct answer.
Probably not the one you wanted to hear.
If you soak your âtoo lubed upâ bearing for a while in solvent, then shake it around, and repeat this a couple of time, using fresh solvent each time you re clean it, you can get the lube out.
But if the bearing has a lil bit of hair or grit that needs to get out, then you really need to get the shields off to clean it.
I have a few bearings that I have yet to deshield, and I have cleaned them, but I have way more that I have had to deshield.
Good luck, once you learn to deshield its not so scary.
Thatâs kind of dismissive, Graiskye. I donât âobsessâ over lubing bearings. I do it because it makes them play quieter. Thereâs nothing wrong with preferring a smooth and quiet bearing.
There are definitely MANY people who play dry, though. If you want maximum spin times and donât care about noise, dry is the only way to fly! Itâs just physics that liquid lube WILL reduce spin time. And as a bonus, you donât have as much maintenance to do⌠cleaning occasionally, but not careful lubrication or break-in.
I wouldnât use alcohol, myself. There are better solvents for the job. But if you dry as soon as you can, there are probably worse things a person could use.
Well, now weâre in the whole dry/lube/dry play debate.
I think Iâve made my preferences known. I like Dry Play. A LOT. I use it in ALL my bearings except for the ones I use in my looping yoyos.
Iâve kind of grown tired of the debate over âto use any sort of lube or notâ. Each point has pros and cons. For dry, you could wreck the bearing due to galling, but itâs not common. Best performance? Debatable. Nothing there to slow a bearing down! In those rare cases of bearings getting killed, they are usually fairly cheap to replace. Dry bearings usually tend to run loud.
With liquid lube,the biggest problem is that a little goes a long ways, and a lot will choke a bearing. Problem? Clean it. Problem solved. New people often over-lube their bearings. The good news is a cleaning takes care of the problem. Any liquid lube will slow down a bearing, thatâs just a simple fact. As long as new people keep in mind âless, in fact a LOT less, is more!â Even that little itty bit of lube on the point of a needle is all the lube one needs on an exposed bearing(no shields). With shields, a half drop or less(less is better still), most gets lost on the shield, and a tiny bit will seep around and get into the bearing. With such tiny amounts, weâre mainly using lube to keep the bearing in top condition and try to avoid galling. Liquid lube will quiet your bearing down. Lube and responsiveness is super important for 2A play, where we use the lube to tune in responsiveness. I use 2 drops of thick lube, and sometimes 1 drop of thin lube to get the performance where I want it in my 2A yoyos. I know, this sounds like the opposite of what weâve been discussing.
With Dry Play, Iâve had it proven to me time and time again that this can provide better performance over a dry bearing. Cleaning a bearing, I got 28 seconds. After Dry Play treatment, I got 56 seconds. Wow. Double. On a flick. Wow. This was a best scenario, most of my results havenât been quite so dramatic, but theyâve usually been in that direction. No argument, it will make your bearing a bit noisy, perhaps even noisier than dry.
It comes down to preferences. I donât care which way you go. I know what I like and thatâs what I do. If I clean a bearing for someone, I will ask do they want it dry, lubed or dry play treated. Whatever they want, thatâs how I do it. People respect my choices, I respect their choices.
The good news is that unless the bearing has a problem(it happens), most things you do with a bearing as far as lubing and treatment can be undone, it just takes time and materials, such as acetone. If you want to mess around with lube and/or treatment, I say go for it. The odds of damage is small, and any problems can be reversed through cleaning and youâre back to clean and dry, which gives you the best starting point you can ask for.
But, what new people also donât take in mind is that we canât use technology to over-come a lack of skill that comes with being new. No matter how âgoodâ a yoyo and how âawesomeâ a bearing is, or even the shape of a bearing, a bad throw on top gear is just a bad throw on top gear. Top gear canât compensate for a lack of skills. We can only get this through working on improving our skills. Technology wonât improve the situation.
My suggestion? Despite my clear bias towards Dry Play, I think that if we have the resources, we should try running bearings dry vs. lubed, and if you want, Dry Play as well(but that requires acetone). Try different cleaning solvents, such as mineral spirits, lighter fluid and acetone. Also, if the resources still hold out, get different bearings in the right size for the yoyo you are going to use for evaluation. of course, I donât want to get into the whole âwhich bearing is betterâ, because like with yoyos, string and lubrication, bearings are also about preferences. Some people like to use the same bearing. Some like whatever came with the yoyo. Some people like me, I will sometimes try to see what bearing will be the best match for the yoyo and me. Most often, I find the factory bearing to be just fine.
But in short, clean your bearings, minimal lube use and donât expect a quick fix. Understand those things and you should be in good shape. Donât be afraid to try things. You can undo just about anything. If youâre unsure about something, ask first and be patient waiting for an answer. Some of the worse case scenarios can be pretty bad, but most arenât that bad. Wrecking response pads can happen but thereâs options for that as well. If youâre willing to play with bearings, youâre willing to silicone a yoyo or replace response pads.
Have fun!
But if I just wanna ârun it dryâ then I donât have to deshield if I put it in acetone