Wheel bearing??

yeah i noticed they are loose in there..not a good thing. they are usually cased. i suggest replacing them if possible i have already had 2 hubs blow out on me. a pain to replace.... gonna go see how much bearing are tomorrow

i think it was done to cut costs and quality

My bicycle, which is not the same kind, the front wheel bearings are loose. The rear wheel bearings are caged. I have a coaster brake, if that tells you anything.

DIANY said:

i think it was done to cut costs and quality

Click to expand...

I doubt that, with uncaged bearings, they are not just slapped on like in a assembly line. I'm sure that someone has to install each bearing (labor intensive) vs inserting a caged bearing. And, there would be, IMO one more bearing, all adding up to more cost.

labor is cheap in china. materials are not. the front doesn't have them because there is less weight on the front rim not needing as much bracing with the bearings they figure.."it'll work"....

loose bearings are faster and last longer (assuming you have a good hub to begin with.) pretty much everytime i've had bearings fail is because they're running dry and not adjusted properly, and the race usually disintegrates first.

i remove the cages from mine, and add more bearings, leaving one short of full.

good quality grease and regular maintenance and they'll last a lifetime.

coaster brakes are no fun to rebuild with a million loose bearings, but i don't mind.

but, as with everything else, cheap hubs use cheap parts. if you want something to last, spend a few dollars more and keep it maintained.

what evidence do you have to support you claim that they're faster and last longer?

besides my own personal experiences with bikes for most of my life, here are a few examples from a noted bike guru who's actually put in real effort to study bearings and other unimportant, trivial things like that...

from Jobst Brandt http://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/:

"The bearings of which we speak in bicycles are primarily cup and cone
bearings in which the cage serves merely as a convenience for
assembly. It has no function other than that. Cheap bearings, that
we needn't consider, often use cages to reduce the number of balls,
cages being cheaper than balls."

"Ball bearing failure occurs primarily through subsurface fatigue that
results in spalling, the flaking of the ball surface. Especially at
the speeds of bicycle use, surface speeds and frictional wear are
insignificant. The two modes of failure in bicycles are spalling and
contamination with dirt and water. Neither of these are affected by
balls making contact with one another."


here's some other stuff written by him if you're bored: http://yarchive.net/bike/index.html

I have now that the wheel bearing are sealed like the one that came in skateboard.and the regular that came in bicycles are ball caged, but there came both for bicycles.

I was going to say that without cages, if you fit more balls, there's more surface area on the bearings, so it's stronger without the cages.

This is Einstein's rule of, mo balls is mo better.

well said bike nut. simply put.. i like it. what type of lubricant should i use? i associated my failure to the loose bearing but i also didnt lubricate them often or properly. so ill try your methods and hope my next one dosent break soon

I think any bearing grease is good. I use extreme pressure Red Line synthetic grease.

Use the grease to hold the balls in place while you put it together. It's very important to make sure the bearing end play is adjusted correctly.

I've noticed that on motor bicycles, the end play tends to loosen up a lot more often than on a regular bicycle.