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I have a Spesh Stumpy from 2005 that I want to use as a winter bike. The bearings need replacing. I have taken it apart and now have two problems.
1) A broken bearing (the outer race/ring) is stuck in the aluminimum linkage - it fell apart when I took it to bits
2) A bearing (whole) is stuck on the main pivot/bearing bolt.
How do I sort these out?
either;
A) the proper tools, time and patience.
or
B) a flat bladed screwdriver, some suitably sized sockets, a big hammer and eyes closed.
depends on if you feel lucky, well do you?
heat the component the bearing is going into. Tie a rag around it and pour boiling water over it - it makes it much easier.
If the one with the collapsed bearing you can get to the back of the bearing just drift it out as usual, if you can't you need a blind bearing puller of you might get lucky that an expanding bolt will fit
Teh spindle - just drift the spindle out of the bearing - support the bearing on something and drive the spindle out protecting the end of the spindle
1) A bearing puller will fix the issue, go to a local engineering shop or independant garage & they shouldn't able to help.
2) Assuming you have the bolt out of the frame, try some penetrating oil, & some brute force.
....or two scokets. One bigger that the bearing, one that just fits into the frame and sits on the outer bearing race (assuming it's a little proud from the recess for the bearing). Pop the lot in a vice & tighten.
Just make sure you get the sockets the right way round
I've had problems with the outer races being seized before. The proper Specialized toolkit doesn't have anything to remove them. As I recall Goldtech used to make a tool to do the job but it is horrendously expensive.
It's almost impossible to get any kind of drift onto the back of the race as the linkages have a small ridge against which the bearings sit. I've generally just used a dremel and a [i]very[/i] steady hand and a lot of patience. The problem with this is that you are grinding very hard steel surrounded by soft aluminium.
Another method I've heard of (though never tried) is to cut a couple of small notches into the ridge around the inside of the linkage, this would let you get a small screwdriver onto the back of the race and tap it out.
Weld it.
Find someone with a tig welder, get them to fire up the smoke stick and create a few weld pools circumferencially around the bearing track. I would let each one cool before doing the next, as the weld pool solidifies the metal shrinks and the race falls out. You need to be carfull about overheating the alloy, a tig is ideal as it provides a very focused head source to melt the steel extreamly fast.
I've used this technique on larger bearing with great success.
And you haven't even tried to get the bearings at the dropout out yet, have you? 😉
That's fun!
Proper bearing puller kit would help a lot! I did it by the notches method suggested above.
A blind bearing puller will do it. A decent workshop / engineering place will ahve one and it will a#take 5 mins and not risk damage.