Lube in Campag Record hubs?

Sir Neil d'Menture

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My hubs of indeterminate age have a lube port covered by a ltlle circlip.
I have never thought of putting anything in there, but should I? And if so what?
Thin oil will run-through and possibly wash any grease out.
Grease will be hard to get in and forced to the bearings.
Or should I not bother and just lube the bearings when needed?
 
The only people I ever knew who put anything in there were testers who ran their hubs on oil. As far as the rest of us were concerned most never touched them for years. I'd not be surprised to find hubs from the 70s or 80s still running the factory grease.
 
Depends.

The factory grease back in the day was "Campagnolo Special Grease" which was an extremely resistant material that held it's properties for a very long time. I've never been able to find out from the factory who made it or what material it was. Some information, there just doesn't appear to be a readily accessible record of.

These days, there are two greases that Campagnolo regularly use in hubs. Kluber NB52 (which may now have given way to Kluber NBU15) and Kluber PolyLub GLY 501. The latter is a heavy duty Lithium grease and is better suited to ratchets such as those in the cassette body mechanism, probably not relevant in your hubs.

The Kluber NB52 (Isoflex Topas, to give it it's full name) is a Barium soap synthetic grease with really good mechanical properties, once in hub assembly, it retains it's (synthetic) oil fraction very effectively and provides both lubrication and corrosion resistance for, literally, years - I have hubs lubricated with this 5 or 6 years ago that haven't been opened since and are still in regular use, with no loss of the buttery smooth feel, for which Campagnolo bearings are well-known.

My experience is, if the bearings are still smooth and have a small amount of stiction that tells you that the grease is still in a good, viscous, oil-bearing state, I'd leave well enough alone, until the start to get a little too free for comfort - at that point I'd strip them out, clean everything thoroughly, replace the balls with 25-Grade and regrease with either Kluber NB52 or NBU15 ...

You are right, oil can be injected through the port (in some designs of Campagnolo hub, grease could also be forced through this way but you end up with a hub full of grease). Oil will run the grease out but there's no real reason why hubs can't run on oil - the main job of the oil is corrosion resistance rather than lubrication (although it does have a job in that respect, especially in loose bearing hubs), so grease is mostly used for convenience to hold the oil where it's needed.

BITD when I worked with teams on a regular basis, we'd run the time trial wheels on sewing machine oil, ditto track wheels - replacing it with a very light "swipe" of grease if the weather was poor (no need on the track wheels, obviously) ... in that case, though, maintenance was our job, rather than our pastime, so labour time wasn't necessarily our first consideration. For practicality's sake, simply running your hubs on grease is probably a better proposition :-D
 
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Wow, thanks both of you especially @gfk_velo. That's a load of info I'd never heard of.
Hubs run smooth with no hint of play. Plenty grease still to be seen.
I wasn't really intending to do anything, but it's always worth checking.
 
BITD people often swapped the clip covering the hole with world champion striped tape. Mind you we also filled in various details of cranks and stems with red paint lol

Shimano clips were chrome and slotted, much prettier. I ran my bearings on WD40 to keep wheels spinning for TTs :)
 
Indeed. We all did weird things for TTs way back in the last century. We believed it made a difference. Probably didn't at our level, but we thought it did. And a lot of testing is in your head.
 
I used to take a ball bearing out of each side of the hubs too when running them on oil. Dunno was the reasoning was behind it but lots of people did it back in the day. I've got a large tub of Campagnolo Special Grease in my garage which I've had since the 1970s - it's still about half full. OK, I didn't ride my bikes much for around 20 years but it'll probably give you an idea of how much of the stuff we had to use in bearings.
 
I have a very large 'tub' (almost small bucket size) of WW2 ex-army grease that I bought when I was a lad in the early 60's from my LBS - and it is still half full. Bill (the shop owner) must have bought a job lot as he had quite a few of them. It has the WD arrow etc. on it. If it was good enough for Churchill tanks then it'll be OK in my bottom bracket!
 
I have a very large 'tub' (almost small bucket size) of WW2 ex-army grease that I bought when I was a lad in the early 60's from my LBS - and it is still half full. Bill (the shop owner) must have bought a job lot as he had quite a few of them. It has the WD arrow etc. on it. If it was good enough for Churchill tanks then it'll be OK in my bottom bracket!
We used to live near Leyland Motors where the WW2 tanks were built. We "obtained" ball bearings for use as Steelies when playing school playground marbles. Never conkers as we couldnt drill a hole for the string.
 
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