That is the second largest problem with petroleum based grease, and the other is that it mixes up with water and creates a soup that doesnt lube well and causes the bearings to fail. Either way your looking at replacing the bearings for basically no good reason except the oil was junk.

First off you DS guys need to consider yourselves lucky that the MFG was the insight to use tapered roller bearings and not the BS single row thin section ball bearings that are so popular in other models and the absolutely wrong bearing for an axle.

Now all you need to do is relube the new bearings with the right quality synthetic grease and pretty much forget about it for a long long time. Its amazing how much better and longer a good 100% synthetic (thats the important part since many are just std grease with some additives pretending to be synthetic) grease will outperform the junk we are all so used to using etc.

I have been told I go on to long about this so if anyone is interested let me know and I will give up details etc.

 

Just a side note but if you guys could manage to get together to make a reasonable purchase (say 50 or 100 total pcs) of seals I think I may still be able to buy from International seal. Wouldnt be looking to make anything either and you would be shocked at what they would go for each in a 100pc quantity.