Jim Cathey wrote: > The conventional wisdom is that a greasable joint, properly > serviced, will outlast the sealed kind. But they're never > properly serviced, and so never do. Everybody stopped > designing them in and reliability went up. >
This same theory has extended to wheel bearings, on some modern cars. On my Honda Civic the front wheel bearings were in a sealed, integral knuckle/hub/bearing assembly and weren't designed to be repacked. If they went bad, you replaced the whole assembly. In practice I'm sure the service life is longer than for a typical non-sealed bearing, because hardly anyone seems to service wheel bearings before they start to make noise.
