Long long time since I did one. How many balls should there be? Is there a fixed number? Just to make it more complex its a french thread road bike one.
As usual when taking a loose bearing set apart they all flew everywhere. I found 20. a picture of an similar BB on the net had 21 in the pic. Surely it must be the same each side? So I have built it up with 10 balls each side. After putting it all back together I found one more on the floor (which could have been there a while). If I have built it up with one too few each side will I die? Its all badly worn so impossible to adjust to be free of play and rotate smoothly anyway. I have adjusted it as well as I can and it runs smoothly with minimal play. If I am one ball short each side will it fail catastrophically? I am going to be doing a 45 mile gravel ride on the bike next week and not sure the new BB I have ordered will be here on time
Thanks for you help and don't be too cruel please 😉
11 per side, but 10 should get you through the ride.
Ta. Not too difficult to strip again so I'll see if I can get some more balls 😉 probably some silly metric size
Ball bearings don’t like to be too cramped, if you can fit an extra ball bearing in and they’re all touching you’ve got to many. See how much space there is in a bearing race
I’ve heard that track cyclists remove a ball bearing to reduce friction you don’t see them all dieing fiery deaths
It will keep working, just badly. You wont die.
If its a nice bike I would get some hubs that use seald bearings. Then when they wear out you can just pop them out a stick in new ones. Cheap and easy.
Designing a hub that allows the bearings to actually wear out the hub is plain daft. I tired for year to maintain a set. You basically had to re grease them before they got worn and even that was a two spanner fiddle. Not worth the hassle.
Its not a hub. Its a BB
I have a sealed unit on order
🙂 Sorry, I cant read.
Same advice though.
1/4" is what you need TJ
Designing a hub that allows the bearings to actually wear out the hub is plain daft
You can often replace the cups and cones.
Trimix
...Designing a hub that allows the bearings to actually wear out the hub is plain daft...
But a decent cup and cone BB, if maintained properly, ie a few drops of oil each week, can last decades.
But why let yourself in for maintenance each wheel when you could just forget about it for a year?
Or ten years 😉
cup and cone V cartridge bearings is a bit of a faith based argument with advantages both ways. If cup and cone hubs had an oil port of grease nipple like they used to then it might tip the advantage their way a bit.
Proper bikes had them didn't they epicyclo?
I like cup and cone. Call me a luddite.
The fact you can easily open up the bearing and see that it is clean and nicely lubed up is a good thing. I don't like to fact that a sealed bearing can deteriorate in a remarkably short time once some kack works it's way in there. And they tend to seize up on you for some unknown reason the day you though you were heading out, and you don't have a spare set of sealed units to hand.
Brakes: Hope good as they can be maintained by buying spare parts. Shimano bad because they can't and they are therefore disposable.
Hubs: Hope good because they don't need maintained and just use disposable bearings. Shimano bad because they need maintained instead of using disposable bearings.
FWIW I have some of each, though my last wheel build was using Shimano XT having seen the abuse my fatbike hubs have taken and their longevity. An annual regrease has kept them going for 8 years and that bike gets used in mud, sand, seawater, salted roads etc.
On cup and cone BBs - the cups are replaceable ( I bet most of you have never seen one!) and the one on this bike must be 50 years old at least
The cone or spindle is also replaceable
Fixed/drive side cup is usually a nightmare to remove on those French BB's.
On this one the cups both sides are identical with pin spanner holes just different lock rings. Its really odd.
Thanks folks now running almost perfect with 11 shiny disco balls in each side rather than 19 rusty balls and one lump that used to be a ball. Never seen a ball bearing with a flat on one side before
It will never be perfect as one cup has some rust pitting but its better than its been for 20 years! I wonder how long I have been running a ball short.
roffle at the confusion between hubs and BBs 😉
But why let yourself in for maintenance each wheel when you could just forget about it for a year?
On my cup+cone bike (both BB and wheels) that I bought in 1989, I reckon I've popped the balls out of the wheels on average about once per decade. I can't even find the pin spanner and wrench to get the BB out. TBH, I don't actually ever remember owning one, so it might have been serviced last when I was home from uni, so that's prior to October 1993.
No idea how many balls there should be, for the reason given above. I know they're big ones. 11 sounds familiar though.
Both the wheels and the BB are as smooth as the other 4 bikes in my collection, with an array of different types of bearing styles.