I couldn’t figure out why my ride yesterday felt somewhere between crunchy and bumpy so when I got home, I checked the usual places–pulled the crank, BB, looked at the cassette, pulled it off…nope nothing. And then, I spun the rear wheel. It felt like someone had replaced my bearings with misshapen rocks. So, what kind of bearings should I put in. It’s just my training set, but I ride them hard and frequently. How hard is it to replace the bearings and can my LBS do it without much down-time?
Thanks
Not a lot of detail here, but I will assume that you have cartridge bearings. Replacing bearings is pretty easy, but you need to have the right tools or the ability to fabricate some home tools. Neither are all that expensive or hard to do. Take a look at Park Tools website and you can see how it is done.
If you have cartridge bearings, all you do is pop the old bearings out and press the new ones in. The difficulty lies in doing so without damaging the bearing seat or the new bearings.
If you have cup and cone loose ball, all you do is replace the balls. This entails opening up the hub, dumping out the old ones, cleaning, putting in new ones, relubing, and adjusting the bearings. The problem here is that if you shattered a ball, then the bearing races are probably shot on that bearing, meaning that you might need to replace the cone or the whole hub.
What type of wheels/hubs do you have?
What hubs? No matter what, no matter what wheel, hub or any other thing - ceramic are not the solution to your problem.
I pulled everything apart last night…it’s a Rol Volant wheel with a pretty generic hub. The bearings in the wheel are not too bad but the bearings in the hub (all sealed cartridge) are really bad…I’m talking about Roubaix bad. It is scary bad. I tried to get the bearings out but failed miserably. I just pulled the cassette and put it on another wheel. How to I get the bearings out of the hub?
Thanks
R10–
I took a ride home last night from a guy who owns a bearing distribution company (seriously) and so I asked him about all these apec this, and ceramic that…he just laughed. He said “unless your making a bearing for a race car and the clearance tolerance is .00000001/cm, then there is NO discernible difference between any of the apec ratings or even ceramics” except perhaps the life of the bearings…It was pretty funny, like when civilians talk to me about the military or flying.
Thanks
Since they are cartridge, all you have to do is pull all of the bearings out and pop new ones in. You will need a bearing puller and a bearing press. There are a ton of ways to make these tools yourself if you want to do the work. Otherwise, the shop can do it easily. The bearings that you will need can be determined by looking at the bearings closely. They will have sizes printed on them. As you discovered from your friend, any standard ABEC 5 sealed bearing will be perfect.
See Park Tools website for detailed, photo based instructions to do it yourself. Perhaps your friend can help as well.
The question then, is should I replace the bearings, or just buy new wheels. I realize new bearings are cheaper, but I really like buying things. I also wouldn’t mind a nicer set of training wheels. The Volants are pretty good, but not great. Any thoughts?
I cannot speak for the Rolf, but feel this might be a link worth mentioning since they are owned by Trek. I do believe Bontrager is their own entity, but as all things Trek seem to come with Bontrager wheels here is my experience with their bearings. Madone had XLites with grinding bearing almost immediately, shop fixed it. Then hub flange cracked on rear. Shop threw wheel out and gave me a new one. 3 months and ‘pawl’ I believe is the word, pawl bearing broke on new rear. Swapped out for wheel #3…I promply sold wheelset and bought OpenPros…smooth as butter worry free. My estimation of Bontrager hubs is they suck ass.
I don’t know if there is a 3 way going on between Rolf/Trek and Bonty, but I wouldn’t ride a set of Bontrager hubs for free after that experience. Too much cluster fuck time spent at shop ironing out stupid failures. I realize there are probably people out there who have thousands of worry free miles on their Bont stuff, but I feel I gave them more than a fair shake.
That is interesting–but I have ROL wheels…not Rolf. ROL volants. I have about 12-15000 miles of my 210 lbs on them. This is the first real issue I’ve had.
Oh crap! I though maybe you meant Rol as short for Rolf! Sorry the Peete’s coffee hasn’t made it through a full cycle yet…hope you get it worked out.
Your friend is pretty much correct. What WILL make things change on a bike however is the viscosity of the grease that is in the bearings and the seals. We want our bearings water resistant but not water tight as water tight will just make them stiff thanks to the friction of the seal. Many bearings will come with very thick grease that is designed for high temps that a bike will just never see - and thus offer up un-needed additional friction.
It is fun though to hear people swear that their new bearings are so so much faster than their old steel bearings…
It is fun though to hear people swear that their new bearings are so so much faster than their old steel bearings…
If you spun my wheels as-is right now, you might think differently.
What do you think about a new wheelset? Maybe a Mavic Open with DT or Dura Ace hubs for a training wheel.
Training wheel - get Ultegra or even 105, plenty of SRAM options out there too. Rim would be a Mavic Open Pro 32 spoke 3x built with a tensiometer and spoke prep.
Right, but that build is a solid 1900g. I was hoping to have a lighter set that is still pretty durable.