It pains me to say it, but Chris King and their grease tool. Mine's survived around two years of Peak District abuse now and is still going strong. Meanwhile it's outlived around four sets of Hope bearings on a friend's, less ridden, bike.
I don't think it's remotely affordable, but with an occasional de-crank and two minutes with a grease gun, it seems to do exactly what it's supposed to in a pretty brutally abrasive environment which tends to kill bearings fast.
I'd take it over the Acro equivalent every time, killed one of those a couple of years back in a matter of months.
Middleburns and Shimano Square taper here, which has just replaced a 5yr old Deore Crankset and matching Octalink BB.
The Octa BB has only just started to feel a bit gritty.
I recommend you ride a bit more singlespeed to improve your spinning,works for me.
yes, they are absurdly heavy. Mine was also great though, when i sold it on for some much lighter xt's (I am not a breaker of components) the bearings were still well smooth and there was loads of lovely clean blue grease behind the outer bearing covers never mind worrying about the seals on the actual cartridge bearings inside.
Had a look at the bearing sizes? (wider than usual ht2 types iirc) You might be able to press new ones into the cups, a lot of your absurd replacement cost will be for outer seals with the stubby aluminium rings on, the cups and that mofo of a spindle, all of which are presumably fine on your broken one.
binners, just get an old set of raceface, fsa or hope cups and run some of my performance bearings.
Tell you what, get the cups off someone on here and I will give you some of my bearings 2x, then just buy some bb bushes from superstar, I've been running these bearings in bb,s for over 18 months on a lot of my friends bikes and my own and they last ages.
The problem is simply rusting, ever 12 to 18 months open up the bearings and regrease them!
