Mr Crudley
Glock in your sock
Tend to agree. If you remove the shock and all the linkages and bearings are smooth enough without any play then you have nothing to do.
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suspension bearings
- Thread starter mas2
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Flow-Rider
Burner
You pretty much know if something is wrong with bearings if you need to keep on tightening pivots from excess play or you have continual creaks. If the bike has a lot of pivots there's really no point in doing one bearings at a time as they go, you will fix one up this month then need to do the others the next, plus you're just double handling everything. Most of these mountain bikes are on the limit of working, just about everything is designed to only just do its job, so there's no such thing as over maintenance on one. If they really wanted pivot bearings to last, they would have fitted a a decent sized roller bearing that was greasable.
Oddjob
Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
You mean like Turner's journal bearings on their old alloy bikes?
The new carbon Turner bikes have gone to enduro bearings and press fit bbs, which brakes my heart.
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Flow-Rider
Burner
Sad indeed.You mean like Turner's journal bearings on their old alloy bikes?
The new carbon Turner bikes have gone to enduro bearings and press fit bbs, which brakes my heart.
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There's a few bikes with greasable bearings but most of them are under sized crap ball bearings not needle rollors. The first decent case or suspension bottom out starts the process of bearing failure from brinelling.
link1896
Mr Greenfield
You've summed it up perfectly here. I'll repeat that part about it's JUST engineered to work, in the name of weight savings.
The loads imposed on the bearings are miniscule and a deep groove ball has the advantage of being able to take axial load.
Poor installation and lack of lubrication / contaminant ingress are the problems.
I find it hard to believe that a bicycle frame can transmit enough point load to cause true brinelling and false brinelling is unlikely because the bikes are on rubber tyres.
Poor installation and lack of lubrication / contaminant ingress are the problems.
I find it hard to believe that a bicycle frame can transmit enough point load to cause true brinelling and false brinelling is unlikely because the bikes are on rubber tyres.
Z
Zaf
Guest
The problem comes more from spec'ing bearings that aren't large or robust enough for the task. Look at the service life of a bearing on a Land Cruiser, their recommended cycle is every 40,000km (that's just a re-pack). We're talking about a bearing that's load bearing a couple of tonne worth of vehicle on it as well, and if you're not doing water regular crossings, you can easily extended that cycle.
I know it's in vogue to hate on the Big S, but legitimately, the Stumpjumper FSR I have is still on original suspension bearings; everything is double row bearings and load disperses extremely well. I've repacked them once so far, and they didn't even really need that. Santa Cruz are currently the only company I know of that gives lifetime warranty on bearings in their frames as well.
Don't even get me started on paying as much for a bearing and how "EnduroMAX" are the industry standard; I think it's clever marketing and brilliant positioning, I'm pretty sure most bearings come out of the big five companies (SKF, NSK, Timken, NTN, etc.) and are just re-branded. So you're paying a brand premium for a bog standard product you could just go to any bearing shop and pick up for half the price without the label. I swig Kool-Aid in gulps, and even can't swallow EnduroMAX bearings.
I know it's in vogue to hate on the Big S, but legitimately, the Stumpjumper FSR I have is still on original suspension bearings; everything is double row bearings and load disperses extremely well. I've repacked them once so far, and they didn't even really need that. Santa Cruz are currently the only company I know of that gives lifetime warranty on bearings in their frames as well.
Don't even get me started on paying as much for a bearing and how "EnduroMAX" are the industry standard; I think it's clever marketing and brilliant positioning, I'm pretty sure most bearings come out of the big five companies (SKF, NSK, Timken, NTN, etc.) and are just re-branded. So you're paying a brand premium for a bog standard product you could just go to any bearing shop and pick up for half the price without the label. I swig Kool-Aid in gulps, and even can't swallow EnduroMAX bearings.
Z
Zaf
Guest
They're just double row bearings, bet that if you buy an SKF from a bearing shop and it claps out you'll get a reliable warranty on it. EnduroMax only has a 2year warranty...on their tools (presses, extractors etc.) and their XD-15 bearings; the expensive nitrogen infused steel ones.
Oddjob
Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
For the cost of my time to follow up the warranty, I'd just mail order new bearings. I'm happy to pay the extra to get good bearings but at the end of the day I still see them as a sacrificial consumables.
They're just double row bearings, bet that if you buy an SKF from a bearing shop and it claps out you'll get a reliable warranty on it. EnduroMax only has a 2year warranty...on their tools (presses, extractors etc.) and their XD-15 bearings; the expensive nitrogen infused steel ones.
Ps the enduro bb bearing replacement tool is magic but the bsa bb socket is rubbish.
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Flow-Rider
Burner
It doesn't take much to cause brinelling but it can take a while before the end results of it to show up, I watched a bloke put together 10 industrial gearboxes by hitting the halves together with a soft hammer instead of taking the endcaps off on the casing and lining the bearings up, all of those 10 boxes came back with failed bearings within 6~8 months. I'm talking gear boxes with ballbearings the size of 10mm in diameter.
Bikes are running cheaply made small bearings and then some bloke at 90~100kg kitted up launches the bike at 2~5m in the air and then has a bad landing where the rim can come in contact with the ground, I can easily see how brinelling can happen. Look how long tapered rollors bearing can last on a car at higher speeds and higher loads, I doubt you will ever see 80000kms out of wheel bearings on mountain bike.
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link1896
Mr Greenfield
Irrelevant to bike suspension bearing chat, but still interesting. I've repacked tapered roller bearings in passenger cars and they've run another 200k km with no dramas despite everyone telling me "oh no you can't do that". Yes you need to be careful with install depth or the ABS tone ring will be too far from the sensor in subarus (that wasn't fun). I even pulled a few from a wreck and repacked to get a cash strapped mate by, and these have run fine for a decade. As long as the races haven't lost the hard surface, she's apples.
Flow-Rider
Burner
No reason why you can't repack them, a lot of times it's more economical in a workshop to replace them.
You are talking about the quality of the bearings and vastly different service. When I get the chance I will look up the capacity of typical suspension bearings. And yes I too have seen bearings worth 5 figures fucked from poor installs.
So to follow this through.
My Bronson uses 7902 ball bearings in the suspension in pairs. Each bearing is capable of a dynamic load of 4.75kN and a static load of 2.64kN. That is a dynamic load on the bearings of 950kg. At which point I assume the frame is no longer frame shaped. True brinelling is when the load exceeds the plastic limits of the bearing surfaces so maybe 2 or 4 times that load.
Contamination and lack of lubrication is the biggest killer and the bearings not spinning but just moving in an relatively arc doesnt help. This helps displace the grease that is there.
False brinelling is another animal all together and is caused by vibration when a loaded bearing stationary, very common in industrial plant with built in redundancy / back up and plant is running nearby.
My Bronson uses 7902 ball bearings in the suspension in pairs. Each bearing is capable of a dynamic load of 4.75kN and a static load of 2.64kN. That is a dynamic load on the bearings of 950kg. At which point I assume the frame is no longer frame shaped. True brinelling is when the load exceeds the plastic limits of the bearing surfaces so maybe 2 or 4 times that load.
Contamination and lack of lubrication is the biggest killer and the bearings not spinning but just moving in an relatively arc doesnt help. This helps displace the grease that is there.
False brinelling is another animal all together and is caused by vibration when a loaded bearing stationary, very common in industrial plant with built in redundancy / back up and plant is running nearby.
Flow-Rider
Burner
Not all frames have bearings that big and some pivots work through leverage too. Are you assuming that 2 bearings are even loaded to get 950kg ?
In the Bronson, yes.