I own a mongoose atb that walmart offers its customers xr200 model. i bought it second-hand from a craigslist ad. But today as I was pulling this thing home from work, I felt like I had to use a lot of force literally pulling myself home. So i get home and the first thing I do is snapped off the quick release to see if the front hub needed some overhauling, and i brought it inside the house for inspection... Lo and behold, when I disassemble the front hub what do i find???
First off, there was WAY too much grease in there, forming globules and unnecessary amount of lubrication to slow down the bike. And if that wasn't the kicker enough, one side of the hub was missing a bearing! So there's 9 on the left side and 8 on the right side... Hmmm, I see how Wal-mart keeps them coming back for more with their price "rollbacks" and so-forth -- just neglect putting a bearing in the front hub!! And yes, I did inspect using the light of a desk lamp to see whether one of the bearings came loose and was just rolling around inside the axle area of the hub but NO it wasn't. It simply was missing!
So what do i do next? I go inside the garage and find the old one-piece cotterless crank from my old royce union which had a nice set of caged bearings if i remember correctly, and I did so phew i was really relieved when I saw they were the same size as the front hub bearings in the mongoose. So I just bent the cage and popped one out so I can use it on the front hub...
I will go ahead and add the missing bearing and give the bike a test around the block to see if that was what caused the incredible onset of exhaustion from pedaling my bike.
-ivan
First off, there was WAY too much grease in there, forming globules and unnecessary amount of lubrication to slow down the bike. And if that wasn't the kicker enough, one side of the hub was missing a bearing! So there's 9 on the left side and 8 on the right side... Hmmm, I see how Wal-mart keeps them coming back for more with their price "rollbacks" and so-forth -- just neglect putting a bearing in the front hub!! And yes, I did inspect using the light of a desk lamp to see whether one of the bearings came loose and was just rolling around inside the axle area of the hub but NO it wasn't. It simply was missing!
So what do i do next? I go inside the garage and find the old one-piece cotterless crank from my old royce union which had a nice set of caged bearings if i remember correctly, and I did so phew i was really relieved when I saw they were the same size as the front hub bearings in the mongoose. So I just bent the cage and popped one out so I can use it on the front hub...
I will go ahead and add the missing bearing and give the bike a test around the block to see if that was what caused the incredible onset of exhaustion from pedaling my bike.
-ivan
