Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Industry has much more severe demands than bicycling. Higher temperatures, heavier loads, longer duty cycles, etc. For a bicycle, it won’t matter for a couple of reasons. First is the light duty demands that bicycles have. The second one is that there is so little grease in HelMart bikes that any added grease will dilute the old grease to ppb (parts per billion) levels.
I am not familiar with today's big box store bikes but would not doubt what you say for a second; as a Schwinn rider in the '50s I recall trying to help my buddy keep his JC Higgins on the road.