As the winter season progresses I’m starting to see a lot more issues with bearings and corrosion; here’s just a small example of what’s been in the workshop over the past few weeks:
Indoor rain?? In fairness, this head-set was a surprise. The bike was in for seized (chain-stay mounted) brake callipers; once the corrosion was removed the brakes were fine, but the subsequent ‘once-over’ of the bike revealed a ‘noisy’ front wheel and a gritty head-set. At this time of year, I’d half expect some road-muck to contaminate the lower head-set bearing……but to see this much corrosion to the upper bearing was a surprise ….. this has clearly been accelerated by sweat from indoor training. The bearing is seized solid on the carbon steerer tube and will be ‘fun’ to remove!
The wheel bearings hadn’t faired much better, but were simple to remove and were replaced for about £10 – with the relatively low cost of replacement bearings, isn’t it worth having them checked at No Two Cycles?
A Soggy Bottom (bracket): A customer complained of a bit of play and a noisy bottom Bracket on his MTB; once the SRAM press-fit BB (not know for the robustness of their seals) was removed, there was a significant amount of rusty water in the BB shell – surely ANY water in a BB shell is significant??
Things start to get emulsional: again, this bike wasn’t in for a gritty headset, but one turn of the bars an it became apparent that a bit of tlc may be required …. the brown water running down the forks was a good indicator too! The particular joy of this job was loose ball bearings; dozens of the rusty little fellas escaped to the darkest corners of the No Two Cycles workshop – I’m sure I’ll be finding them for years to come. New bearings were fitted and some amazing repellant grease from Kinetic Bike Bearings and we’re up and running…..well, good for the rest of the winter season at least!
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