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Introduction
The housing looked fine—fresh paint, guard in place, no puddles. Then a fingertip across the seal lip returned a faint oil sheen. No drip. No smell. Just a whisper that the barrier between clean lubricant and the outside world was losing its edge. That’s how many bearing failures start—quietly.
The Core Insight
Seals are the first line of defense. When a lip hardens, a V-ring rides high, or a labyrinth path packs with dust, two things happen: clean oil walks out, and contamination walks in. You won’t always see it in vibration or temperature right away; the earliest tell is visual and tactile—an “oil halo” around the end cap, tacky residue at the lip, or a single vertical track mark that wasn’t there last week. Catch that, and you interrupt the failure chain before wear accelerates.