Bike bearings

ktache wrote:

One thing that improved massively over the years was the sealing on Shimano's MTB hubs. The rear would always let in more filth on the freehub side. By the last few the rim would die before the front would need stripping.

One thing that did annoy me was the move from the very sturdy 1/4 inch in the rear to the fiddly 3/16ths, and of course the need for a 14mm hex to replace the freehub. Plus I couldn't adjust tightness with the spindle under tension with the fat pipe. Lighter and maybe stiffer but I saw more cons than pros.

Went Hope for the new front, sealeds have lasted a good 4 years of hard filthy commuting and riding.

Ha ha  - I got a-one o' them 14mm allen keys right at the bottom of the toolbox. Bearings and associated parts do seem mostly better now .... apart from the ones that ain't.  I even like pressed-in BB bearings, me. On the other hand, one must possess special tools even more peculiar than a 14mm allen key.

I'm looking forward to the promised bearing nerd-fest. I'm so excited I have to go to the small room twice as often as usual! It might be me age and the 175Km up & doon the Welsh hills I done this week, mind.

This arternoon I took some jockey wheel apart for a clean/lube, just to get in the mood.

levestane wrote:

I have some '70s Lambert hubs with cartridge bearings that run fine. Apart from this everything else of mine is cup and cone (Shimano, Zeus) that also run fine for the cycling I do; I'm probably not the best contributor for this one!

Like you perhaps, I used cup & cone hubs in all sorts of wheels (and all sort of qualities) for decades. It's a well-tried & tested design although, as well as needing good quality materials and detailed design aspects, the user needs to understand how they work to get them to run well and to keep them that way.

Shimano have only recently decided to forego cup & cone in some of their wheels in favour of the cartridge/sealed bearings.

A common user error, made by me for a few years until I leant better, is to apply too much or too little axial loading, both pre-loading with the lock nuts and/or the loading applied when tightening the quick release or the wheel nuts. It's very easy to over-tighten and spend pedalling energy warming up and wearing the hub bearings rather than going down the road! Also easy to find you have a slack and wobbly wheel at a ride's end, when the grease has settle down or migrated out of the bearing a bit.

Some cup & cone hubs were very well sealed from the elements whilst others were terrible. I still had, until recently, some wheels with Shimano 600 cup & cone bearings, protected by  large rubber washers clasped over the hub ends. These have done many, many miles over nearly 40 years and only needed a grease top up once a decade, if that. They're still going on someone else's bike.

I also had a set of rather expensive Campag Croce D'Aune wheels with fancy deep rims et al, bought about 1988 I think. They had no weather protection at all and seemed to have ball bearings and races made of the softest steel available. If used in the wet and not taken apart and regreased within 30 minutes, they would rust like mad. And grit got in there very easily too.

They had a small hole with a circlip covering it in the centre of the hub axle, to pump grease in until it oozed from the bearings at each end. Doing this helped keep water out for a little while but also created a vast drag on the bearings unless ultra thin grease was used, for the few miles that it lasted before somehow evaporating (slowly running out the bearings on to the road, I suspect). 

I admit that I prefer cartridge/sealed bearings these days. They too can have axial loading requirements but the better wheel makers seem to build in the necessary features to semi-automate this. Press the bearings fully and squarely into the hub with the central inner sleeve in place and the axial loads, from inside and outside the bearing, are set.

But some are not as well designed as that, I hear.