Maybe I’m being pedantic about blind bearings then, as blind bearings won’t allow you to tap out from the other side ie they’re ‘blind’ there’s no hole there. Pedantic because I’m not sure my bike actually has any truely blind bearings. It has some that sit on a ridge with a hole in so this tool would be good for that.
Yes, moderately pedantic, but I’ll let you off 😉
Yes, they’re not true blind bearings, which typically need something to be inserted into the race itself, but more “short-sighted” bearings instead, that allow you to get to the back of the bearing, but you can’t actually press it out.
The biggest annoyance of this sort of bearing is that you effectively need to push/pull on the center race and you need to be really, really careful when you do so to avoid the bearing exploding at leaving you with the outer-race still stuck in the linkage. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that a bit of judicious heat, applied to the linkage block (but not the bearing itself) works wonders for making them easier to get out and I’ve now got a pretty good success rate (say, 95%) of getting bearings out intact.
Giant manage to make bikes without this sort of bearing, but a lot of other manufacturers’ bikes are full of them and they are a pita when they go wrong.
