DIY: How to reuse EJ front strut mounts and regrease the bearings

[idosubaru]

OEM EJ front struts mounts rarely fail.  So if you find yourself stuck thinking you wouldn’t need to replace it but the bearing isn’t good - you’ve got an option. If it’s not rusted terribly and the bushing/mount material is good and only the bearing is an issue, you can regrease the bearings. 

Today I did one on a 190,000 mile Outback strut that’s sat outside for a while and the bearing was seized, then hard to turn, very lumpy and catching.  Doing the following, it was perfectly usable by my standards when I was done.  

For practice and to get a feel for what you’ll be doing you can use a tiny pick or spludger device to pry the edge of the face seal up on the under side of the mount where the face seal meets the inner race. I’m not all that delicate with these, the OEM ones I’ve done the seal materials are highly pliable and resilient.

Use a needle fitting for a grease gun and insert it very roughly about 30 degrees incline from the seal face and between the inner race and the face seal.  It’ll take a few times to get it to actually go down into the bearings. It often “stops” right away and you can’t push it in.  If it stops - Pull back. Slide down the race a little or pull it all the way and rotate and try again. 

Eventually the needle slides in a solid 1/2” and notably goes down into the bearing. Before you pump grease press down where the needle enters and “seal” that entrance up with a finger so less grease just comes back out of that area when you squeeze the grease gun  

Give it some grease and pull the fitting out.

rotate the bearings a few/couple dozen times by hand. Wipe up any external grease.

repeat those steps 2-7 times depending how much grease you put in. Smaller shots of grease multiple times would be ideal and best.

dont overfill the bearing or pump quickly or the face seal can be push out     

If that happens just press the face seal back down by hand 

after a few times the bearing will feel much better. Every other bearing I’ve done (timing pulleys and others) feels indistinguishable from new after doing this - tight and smooth just like a new bearing , strut mounts seem to retain a little less smooth feeling but still feel much better, turn freely, feels greased, and good enough for me for a strut mount.

Ive done this to timing pulleys?and they do just fine even after 50,000 miles of high rotational speeds and localized temps. And I’ve done it to older subarus with unavailable pulleys and unavailable bearings where the face seal cracks and gets more damaged than normal due to age/design - not ideal but options are limited - and still no problems 10’s of thousands of miles on probably 10-20 bearings like that.  So it seems like this should be a reasonable option in some cases for EJ strut mounts  

 

[brus brother]

nice write-up on this type of bearing

Notable that there are too few grease nipples on newer cars

seems like in olden days even the radio had a grease nipple 

[Rooster2]

A good write up...........

 

I am guessing you are using an old fashion pump handle grease gun. Where did you source a needle fitting to fit the grease gun?