Greasing a thrust bearing?

[Dave Mann]

Having got fed up with scrabbling about under the dash to oil the clutch thrust bearing and trying not to get the oil in the clutch I gave it some thought, at work we had loads of grease lubricated motors which hadn't seen a grease gun in ages. Also the only oil lubricated ball and roller bearings I knew of were in our Sevens and turbochargers nearly as big as our Sevens. The next time I had an engine out I cleaned and dried the clutch thrust bearing and replaced the oil pipe with a grease nipple and pumped the bearing about a quarter full after which the grease nipple was removed and the oil pipe refitted. The other cars were treated the same when the engines were out, that was 20 years and 70,000 miles go since when I haven't heard a murmur from the bearings.
Oil in the clutch comes mainly from overfilled gearboxes or gearboxes with worn first motion shaft seals or from over oiling the thrust bearing.