Grease nipple XT hubs

There's enough material in the body of an XT hub to allow it to be drilled and tapped to accept a 5mm grease nipple. The mod was done as a built wheel and drilled with a standard battery drill and tapped with a sliding t-bar tap wrench.
Grease works its way out of both sides of the hub, it might look a bit indiustrial but it hasn't required stripping or cleaning since doing this mod.

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Love this… 25 years ago my road hubs had something similar….

that is good work.

You could just drill a hole and cover with tape. My 25 year old Campag Record hubs have this mod with a small spring clip to cover the hole.

My Middleburn hubs from '97 have grease nipples, but recessed ones like the old microlube ports.

Nice work there RustyNissanPrairie. How long have you been using the hub with this mod? Is a lot of grease required to fill up the hub?

[/quote]Nice work there RustyNissanPrairie. How long have you been using the hub with this mod? Is a lot of grease required to fill up the hub?

Been using the hub like this for 10-12 months, just happen to have a camera on me yesterday whilst tinkering. It takes a few pumps of a large industrial sized grease gun to get it oozing of the cones, it is easy to get carried away and you need to bear in mind that more grease works its way out once your riding and you need to be carefull wiping it off on the disc side.

Good job …

Years ago, the old XT hubs used to have grease ports in the bearing seals/covers, shame they don't still do something like that so you don't have to dismantle them to grease them.

I did something similar in the early 90's and drilled a small hole in the middle of the hub and used a wide zip tie to cover it and slide it out the way to put grease in.

If you used this regularly I think the loose vs cartridge bearing argument will be over..

Its possible to do it on BB's as well, but requires a bit more faffing around with a roll of shim steel to seal the holes that lead into the frame tubes from within the BB shell.

I used to have this setup on a previous frame when running external BB bearings-I dont have any pics though and my current set up uses a Profile Racing bottom bracket that dosnt seem to suffer like externals do so I've not bothered so far.

does the extra offset weight not effect the balance of the wheel at high speed????? (tongue in cheek)

Onzadog – Member

does the extra offset weight not effect the balance of the wheel at high speed????? (tongue in cheek)

NASA rocket scientist mode on}
no I drilled the hub for the grease nipple opposite the tyre valve so it actually spins better
{NASA rocket scientist mode off

I drilled the hub for the grease nipple opposite the tyre valve

That being the case it means that you've committed the mortal sin of not lining up the valve hole with the logo on the hub… 😉

Brilliant mod though!

that's similar to the mod I do to my spd's so I can pump grease into them or a light weight oil if i'm in race mode. a la ck bb.