Every Day in May - Day 17

I came home from work a little early and wanted to get in a short ride. Pat and Maya were heading to Embreeville for a walk, so I agreed to meet them there. I concentrated on riding fast, which is pretty easy on this route because it is mostly flat. Stats for this ride:

Bike: R
T: 45:48
O: 124.4
M: 39.3
A: 15.6
D: 11.91

The biggest problem was my rear wheel bearings - they were making a lot of noise and I was guessing that something had gotten in there from my ride in the rain last week. So this blog entry is mostly about rebuilding the rear hub.



Step 1 was to clean off my workbench so I could get at it. Pull out the trusty box 'o bike parts and tools...give the wheel a spin - the bearings sounded like there was sand inside...

Step two - get out the bike repair book. This old crescent wrench was originally my Dad's. He gave it to me when I went to college and had to have tools to work on my car.


Next I check out the freewheel/cassette and pull the axle. The grease was gray and runny - not a good sign. No way to do this work without getting all greasy.



Out come the bearings. This is where Pat got tired of taking pictures, although I was far from finished. One side was clean as a whistle - the bearings were shiny and looked fine. On the other side though, both the bearings and the cone were pitted and rusty. Not good!

I cleaned everything up and checked inside the hub at the bearing race. Those looked good - both sides - although not perfect. That is the expensive part as it involves replacing the hub and essentially rebuilding the whole wheel - spokes and all. With an old rim and spokes, that would have basically meant just getting a whole new rear wheel. Yikes!

So...hoping for an inexpensive fix, I'm off to the parts store tomorrow for new bearings and cones.