As the descriptor alludes to, I now know one person who uses soy sauce to clean their bearings, and another person who uses olive oil to help lube responsive bearings. Both of these apparently suit their purpose just fine. What are other weird substances used to help maintain a yoyo that are outside of the norm?
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Immediately came to mind
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Where’s the dislike button
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In theory vinegar should remove any rust from troublesome bearings.
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I mean if it’s already rusty why not. Idk if I want my bearings to smell like boardwalk fries though
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I usually pay extra for this
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Diet Coke is more acidic than regular vinegar. I wouldn’t use the sugared version but diet would probably be fine.
Simple Green or Bar Keepers friend could do in a pinch. You would have to rinse them out well so you didn’t get left over water or grit.
The best degreaser is honestly probably dish soap. If you boiled some bearings with some Dawn and then dried them well it would clean them thoroughly.
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I am new to yoyo maintenance, need to clean my bearrings yet.
But, when I was skating, I cleaned them hundreds of times and it never failed. I’ll try the same principle with my yoyo bearrings. Soak them in a citrus based dish cleaner, rubb them with a tooth-brush, dry them well, then put on some wee lube.
Will this technique be fine, guys?
Thank you for your advice and have a great weekend everyone!!
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I rub dish soap through my dirty bearings and then blast them under the sink faucet for a bit. 100% success rate for cleaning bearings doing this and it doesn’t even take a minute. Needing to clean bearing stopped being as much of an annoyance once I started doing this.
One of my friends uses a drop of olive oil to quiet down their bearing. Which still seems insane to me, but they’ve been doing it for years and it works for them. So that’s all that matters I guess.
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How hot does a yoyo bearing get in use, I wonder?
Olive oil has a fairly low smoke point so I wonder if you can get some pyro off of it.
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Definitely not hot enough in any play except 2a. I haven’t tried 2a enough to know, but I know that unresponsive bearings that function well don’t get above room temp typically.
I don’t know how this would work but now I’m curious! As long as the bearing doesn’t get rusty afterwards I don’t see how this would be detrimental to a bearing used for yoyoing either.
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I do wonder if evapo rust would help with a bearing that is rusty. I have a few old ones that are if a non standard size that rusted to a fixed axle essentially.. Might try vinegar first but have thought about trying to revive them
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i used trumpet valve oil back in the day to lube my bearings. has the same consistency as thin lube
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I have use olive oil and mct oil for lube for 10 years
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Thats basically exactly what I do. I have a datavac for pc cleaning and it happens to be the perfect tool to dry off the bearing after doing the toothbrush and dawn dish soap scrub. I sometimes do a little lube to make them silent but honestly I don’t even usually bother with that anymore. As long as it’s not screaming it’s ok to have some bearing noise for me.
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