I contacted All Balls about the grease they use in their bearings and their response was:
From: Tech
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 3:53 PM
To: Helen Turner
Subject: Re: Contact Form
Our bearings use Chevron SRI Grease NLGI 2. I am not sure it is compatible with Redline CV-2 grease.
I looked up the datasheet and found that the SRI Grease 2 uses a polyurea thickener. Looking up compatibility information, polyurea seems to be not compatible with any other thickener and some times not even other polyurea thickeners. I contacted Chevron specifically about this grease and compatibility with a calcium sulfonate thickener (eg. Redline CV-2) and the response was:
Thank you for your inquiry. However, polyurea based thickeners are not compatible with calcium sulfonate thickeners.
Regards, Clay Lubetek Engineer
To me that says it might not be compatible with ANY other thickener. What this means is when you go to pack those new All Balls bearings you should probably only use that same Chevron SRI grease 2. Incompatibility can make the grease loose its protection ability. Oops!
Now personally for the needle bearings I drop them in clean kerosene and remove all the grease they come with. Then I clean off the kerosene and repack with my grease of choice. For wheel bearings I remove the seals then do the same (or sometimes I just leave whatever is in there because it's always risky to remove those seals). If I'm repacking old bearings, unless it's grease I put in then I make sure to remove all the old grease before putting in new stuff.
This is especially important for the needle bearings because the instructions say to pack grease in them during install and I doubt most people use the Chevron stuff.
Thanks for the info. might be on to somthing there. ive put two sets in and just nursing this one but will need a third shortly
the seals seem ok i use a good water proof grease when i pull it down its just mush
so its a good scrub in kero and a pack of the good stuff and see how it gies next time. ive had the same happen on other bikes with allballs kts sem ok but just dont last