Use a Bearing Blaster.  Bearing Blaster is pretty neat tool.  It has two parts one to hold the bearing in place and the other one is to cover the bearing edges which has a hole where you you stick in those CRC/Carb Cleaner/ nossle/straw.

 

Use a CRC brake cleaner w/ bearing blaster to blast out those gunk.

 

 The bearing would be sandwich between the bottom plastic and the top plastic.   Use your  hand  to press down the cover while the other hand sprays in the cleaner.  The force of the compress cleaner will blast the cleaner into the bearing.   

Should look like this when preparing.

I place the bearing plaster in a bowl catch all the excess cleaner when flushing the bearings.  

 

 

 

We must shop at the same store spray, bowl, blaster  this brake clearner is acetone

 

 

 

Reading this thread made me wonder if I did correctly when I did my reels. Is the grease in bearing dark colored usually? Will acetone clearly get dirty when you flush out factory grease? I wasn't paying attention how dirty it was, but didn't notice the color...

Reading this thread made me wonder if I did correctly when I did my reels. Is the grease in bearing dark colored usually? Will acetone clearly get dirty when you flush out factory grease? I wasn't paying attention how dirty it was, but didn't notice the color...

The acetone will get kinda milky/cloudy like, and you'll notice grease floaties. I've never had the acetone turn colors before.

Colored lubes like Hot Sauce etc will dye the solvent but it's those white flakes that are the emulsifying grease and oil. I'm also using Perfect Solution upon JF's recommendation. Good stuff. 

NIFTY tool.  Looks like I have an order to place today...

 

 

 

EDIT:  Order placed !

 

Got my Bearing Blaster in and used it for the first time today.  I have to give it a pretty solid thumbs up.  Perhaps it won't get a bearing any cleaner than soaking them...but the pressurized brake cleaner going through the bearing seems to flush them out faster.  I had been soaking a pretty small bearing (3x7x3) for a while and couldn't get it to spin.  Put it in the bearing blaster - gave it a couple shots of brake cleaner, and then spiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnn it went...

 

As baluga mentioned, I put the blaster in a small bowl to catch the run-off and didn't have any escape.  You DO want to give short blasts with the brake cleaner or you potentially can have solvent come back up the port for the application straw.

 

I'm glad it worked pretty well  for you Goose!

Is it a problem if you have two bearings of the same looking size and mix them up when putting them back after cleaning? If so, how do you keep them straight when putting them in the solvent.?

They either fit or they don't.  If they are the same size, then there is no issue.

I've seen guys spin test a bearing to see which direction it spins best in and install them that way. Myself, if a bearing is "directional" it gets tossed.

I made a left turn once, when I should have made a right turn.  It took me a few minutes to get my bearings straight.

Think NASCAR: Drive Fast Turn Left. You'll get there eventually

Think NASCAR: Drive Fast Turn Left. You'll get there eventually

Varoom, varoom, varoom....

After watching tacklejunkie's video on cleaning (which was great btw) , he uses ardent reel cleaner for his entire side plate for cleaning his one way bearing. Is that what you all use? Acetone would damage the plastic cover right?

I remove the one way bearing and use Perfect Solution to degrease.

I remove the one way bearing and use Perfect Solution to degrease.

Yup & I do the same for the press fit ones that don't come out.