[Ben The Bike]

Originally Posted by jcb

If there is rubbish in the bearing, forcing it to spin will only wear out the balls and cage, which may results in square balls or a bearing that ends up disintegrating when it spins.

To be fair, I tend to find a bearing with grit/rust etc tends to stay Grindy an nasty even with flushing out with GT85 (but this is me ), so I rarely bother cleaning it out properly, I either just replace the bearing with a new ish one and be done with it (remembering to put the old grotty bearing back in the box just in case I run outta good ones), or just force it into spinningness using dr makita if I don't have/can't be bothered to find a fresh one.