I was eager to replace those ball bearings in my 3/4 until I made an interesting discovery. Long ago a mechanic told me that the standard bearing grease is to thick for those ball bearings. I understood what he told me but I didn't know exactly which grease to get since they all seemed equally as thick. Sooo, one day I was replacing some bad bearings (this was getting old) and I decided to pack the heck out of them with as much grease as the housing would hold. I ran out of the standard bearing grease and added some white lithium grease. The resulting mix made a more fluid grease. Since then I have not had a bearing go bad!!! That's my suggestion for those of you who don't want to screw around with switching to roller taper bearings.
