As title really! Cheers!
Are they not ball bearings? Have you taken them out cleaned them and checked they are smooth and not rough?
Bearings are about 75p from any LBS. If it's been rough for a while then you may have damaged the cups and/or cones though.
Yeh they are ball bearing I believe havnt got round to pulling them apart yet. only noticed when I rebuilt the bike and the wheels were moving from side to side so tightened them up a bit and now they feel very rough. Might just pull them apart later on and regrease and see how they feel.
They're an easily sourced size... 5mm IIRC - although please put me right if I'm in error.
so tightened them up a bit and now they feel very rough
you probably over tightened them a little... it's a fine point! You should take them apart and ideally put new balls and grease in them. balls available in the bike shop, or if you look on shimano's website, they have service/tech docs with the ball size, and you can get em off ebay.
you'll need cone spanners to do the job, which are basically very thin spanners.
to get them so they were smooth running though they were only finger tight - is that right/
the balls are usually an imperial size - 3/16" I think for the front, and 1/4" for the rear.
yes, but you then need to back off very slightly (about a quarter turn when i did mine yesterday!), to compensate for when you tighten the lock-nut. a very small amount of play is better for them than a small amount of over-tightness
ok cheers - think Ill replace the ball bearing anyway as have been running them for a year without maintenance anyway!
If you replace the ball-bearings it might be worth spending a couple of quid. I finally serviced a set of cup and cones before the race and cone nut were trashed. After next to no time (month or two, can't remember exactly) the hub was rough again. Most of the balls looked like balls made of silver putty blobs, you could see all the joins between the blobs as if a coating had come off, suffice to say races and cones were buggered.
Not silly money but next time I will spend more than the no-name bag from the LBS cost me.
(even though I acknowledge it could have been my fault 🙂 )
as mentioned above, the unfortunate thing with cup and cone bearings is that if you've been running them for a little while with play in them, it damages the cup/cone, and new bearings don't return the smoothness... in fact, they can be worse than the worn balls... it's defo worth a try putting new ones in though. LOADS of grease.... that's the way forward
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/ladyofletters_123/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=25
I take it these generic ones will do?
Deore hubs have crappy sealing anyway, and if they were loose for a while you'll probably need new cones for them too. If they're anything other than shiny and smooth then replace them. A good LBS should have a stock of spare shimango cones. Take the old ones in to get a match.
3/16" front and 1/4" rear by the way