If you can manage to deshield it you can use a piece of paper to extract gunk from the inside. You might even be able to do this with the bearing still stuck on the post.
Also check out the full list of maintenance topics:
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Why not use alcohol? Id rather not use smelly and noxious chemicals if I don’t have to, and imo you dont need them to get a good clean. Alcohol works just as good as everything else, and is far less of a pain to deal with than the other options.
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Isopropyl Alcohol isn’t a smelly and noxious chemical? This is news to me…
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Acetone really is the best. Nasty poisonous stuff, but cleans a bearing wonderfully and dries fast.
I agree that kid’s shouldn’t be handling acetone or any other harsh chemicals without help from an adult, but I’d personally recommend against alcohol unless you’ve got 100% pure isopropyl alcohol around the house. Otherwise, you’re probably introducing water and potential rust into the bearing. Not the end of the world, but being a skateboarder, I keep water as far away from my bearings as I can whenever I can help it.
Edit: @codinghorror is right. I remove my shields when I clean, but that’s a habit from skateboarding - I’ve dealt with a looottttt of bearings over the years, so desheilding is second nature to me. For most yoyo bearings, a simple submerge and stir should do the trick even with the shields on.
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Compared with acetone definitely. It is also not harmful to smell and it doesn’t dry out your skin in a flash. It is not as dangerous (harmless unless you bathe in it) to come in contact with your skin and is just much nicer to work with as far as chemicals go.
And I’m not worried about the small amount of water in the 91%+ varieties. I use canned air and spin it dry. If you are careful it is just fine. None of my bearings have had any issues with it, and this dates back to my skating days as well.
Acetone may be slightly quicker, but the smell just makes it more annoying. Definitely the best if you aren’t going to bother taking off the shields, but I wouldn’t recommend that anyways. Take of shield and throw in trash, they do no good in a yoyo.
To answer the Op’s actual question:
The best way to quickly clear a bearing that I know of, is to throw a really hard breakaway and immediately perform a fully committed-hardcore gyroscopic flop until the yoyo spins out. You may have to do this a couple of times.
This doesn’t work every single time, but most of the time, the bearing will quiet up. That trick in particular puts a lot of torque [pretty sure that is the correct term] on the outer race of the bearing, allowing things to move a little differently than they normally would.
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I’ve tried deshielding them before with a pin but I couldn’t do it.
Is there a trick to it?
That c-clip has two ends. Both of those edges are angled, and one of those edges will be angled in such a way that you can get the tip of that pin in there pry it out. The other side is hardly possible.
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Let’s be honest. Sometimes they are a PITA. Definitely remove the side that isn’t angled, but even with a pin sometimes you have to pry at it for a while. I find most of the “stock” centertracks can be quite finicky. You eventually get better at it, but occasionally you will get a stubborn clip that just doesnt seem to want to budge.
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Thanks
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I had a new bearing today that started getting noisy after a few throws. I tried this trick and it really did work. Saved or at least postponed some bother cleaning the thing. Thanks!
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