Funny story about packing bearings from my childhood...
My grandfather, a very "old school", southern, shade-tree mechanic was repacking the bearings on his old Ford truck (with the bulletproof 390, oh how I wish I still had that one). In the interest of manhood, I was watching/helping him with rapt fascination. The one thing that struck me as odd was that he was smoking a cigarette while he had a small pan of gasoline to clean the old grease off of the bearings sitting nearby.
He laughed, and told me that I could not tell my mother that he had done what he was about to do... As a kid of probably... say... 8-10... that certainly got my attention! He then went into an explanation of how liquid gasoline itself is not flammable, it is the fumes that do all of the work. He was telling me this as we were walking over to the bench where the pan was... he struck a match, lit his cigarette and then waved his hand over the pan and then quickly put the match out in the gasoline... man-o-man for a kid, there was nothing better than THAT cool trick! Then, to show me how dangerous it actually was... he lit another match... and tried it again without the hand wave... with the expected results.... explaining to me about such things as flash points, fuel/air mixtures and so forth. That was almost 40 years ago, and I remember it all like it was yesterday.
(BTW, he also reminded me that you should never rest your hand - holding a cigarette - on the battery. A fact, evidentally he had accidentally learned the hard way)
That day, I learned about chemistry, physics, automotive repair and how smart a guy who never graduated from high school could be. I actually love repacking bearings... only because it takes me back to that moment...
