I have had my Dv888 for about two and a half months now and in the past month it has been making weird noises every two to three days. I had been spraying the bearing with compressed air when it made the noise but it would still make the noise in another two or three days.
I recently used paint thinner in a jar to clean the bearing, the bearing did not make any more noise until I had played with it for about 3 hours and it started complaining again. I also use a basic valve oil for a lubricant.
Try a non residue electrical contact cleaner and also you may want to look at your string and see if it is really frayed. Those little frayed hairs get into bearings really easy. Just because a string isnt worn out completely doesn’t mean that particular string isn’t making a problem. Just some ideas. Open up the sides of the bearing with a needle and do a good cleaning. I can’t say anything about the valve oil. I like my bearings dry so I don’t use lube. When I did use lube it was yyj thin lube.
To me it seams to spin a lot longer and on my concaves it makes them quiter IMO. Terrapins come dry with a dry powder or such in them. I just blow them out with air. There somewhat noisy. My 10 balls are really quite new and after I dry them you can here them a little more buy not much. and I know from experience dry bearings give the best unresponsive play.
It shortens its life span but were talking like $5 to $20 bucks every 2-10 years based on play and how well you clean and take care of it. Some say they have had a bearing dry longer then that and some say even with cleaning they only got like 2 years out of it. But were talking years here. Is that much money a bother over years. Id rather get the most of it that I can get out of dry play. But its just my preferences and some don’t agree. To each his own.
Play through it. Some bearings will do this and all you need to do is keep it lightly lubed. (very lightly)
I never run bearings dry. Anytime you run a precision bearing dry it can damage the bearing contrary what people might say. If you run any metal parts together with no lube it will damage it. Clean it again and add very small amount of lube then play it like there is no tomorrow. It will finally break in to the point of super fine spinning fun.
Since last post i have not had much time to yoyo so I have not used it, it has been sitting on a table for about 2 days until I picked it up today and it spun for about 5 seconds and became responsive.
Everything that others said earlier is great advice. It sounds to me that our bearing is either breaking in or has something stuck in it. Make sure you clean it thoroughly. After you clean it, just add a small drop or two of thin lube, and it should work fine. Just to make sure, are you de-shielding your bearing before you’re cleaning it?
Yes, I do de shield my bearing when I clean it, where should I apply lube the bearing seat and the bearing with its shield? Sorry I keep asking these questions just trying to get my yoyo to work again.
If you have deshielded it then yo can see the balls in the bearing. Take a needle or tack and get a little lube on it. Then touch one of the balls with the pin. Do the same thing again and touch a ball opposite to the first one. Now you are lubed up and ready to go. Shields not necessary. You can leave them off.
Ya you can yo with the sheilds off. I do that a lot as well, but you will need to clean them a lot more then you are now if you do that. Plus when you de shield it sometimes people will put a curve in the Shields without realizing it and then it rubs and can lock a bearing up. You have to very careful with the Shields to not bend them. I say throw it in mineral spirits and swoosh it around for about 5 min with the Shields off. spin it on a pencil or something to dry it. Give 5 min to airdry then put it back in without Shields and test. If all good then add lube and Shields if desired. If it becomes bad again after putting the Shields on then thats the problem. Leave em off.
Do not put lube on the bearing seat. Just the bearing. If the bearing is de-shielded, do what other people said to do, and use a needle and add a pinprick of lube on the balls. If it’s shielded, add a drop or two on the shield of the bearing.