Bought a Trifecta. Some DryPlay from Terrapin X came in the mail at the same time. I figured, “let’s just go whole hog”. Acetone bathed the bearing, let it dry. Put the DryPlay in, only a tiny touch on two balls as the video demonstrates. Played the bearing for a few minutes and it went from a sort of gritty sound to a metallic yet smooth sound. I took that to mean all was good!
In the middle of a throw today, the bearing suddenly became super loud. I gave the yoyo a tug and it came back to my hand, so obviously the bearing had gone responsive somehow.
Not sure what could have caused it…
I didn’t put enough dry lube after all; what I thought was a “lubed” bearing was actually more or less just dry. I took the “only put a wee amount” to the opposite extreme and didn’t put enough. This may have resulted in the standard kind of locked ball from running dry.
The dry lube didn’t break up enough, and now a piece of grit has caused a ball to get stuck.
Any thoughts or advice? I imagine I should just acetone bath it again and start from scratch. Hopefully that will free up the stuck ball at the same time. Running super-low on 100% pure acetone, though, and not sure where to get more. What’s a good backup fluid if acetone isn’t available?
1: Thoroughly clean out your bearing using whatever you like to use to clean out bearings. Then a fast acetone bath and get ready to get to work.
2: You done right. A touch to a couple of balls and spinning. Yeah, it sounds gritty and nasty and can even STOP a bearing from having any decent spin. Spin more, it will move around.Blow it out. Spin more. Add some acetone here and there to help break it down and let it move around. You might need to repeat by adding tiny amounts of acetone. Spin, spin, spin, spin. Check. Stil gritty? Add acetone. Noisy? Add acetone.
If you’re out of acetone, get more acetone. It requires acetone.
Call, email, PM or text if you need more help. I did this to two Trifecta bearings, installed one in my Burnside, broke it back in, sent that and the other bearing out to a friend in Florida and he used them at SET for competing.
Note: if you CALL, odds are I won’t answer if I don’t know your number. If you text, identify yourself and the reason and I’ll call or text you back at your request to the number you want.
It takes time and practice. If you screw up, you can clean it out and start over.
