With a quick release like this, you should set up a very little play outside of the bike, and check there is no play with wheels in and tight quick release. Otherwise the bearings will be too tight.
Cone nut wrenches at bike stores are ridiculously priced. I have lots of inexpensive wrenches made in China that will fit the cone nut but are not the thickness of a cone nut wrench. I used a grinder to grind one down to the same thickness as a cone wrench.
Just ordered box of tools for $50 on ebay, will see how it goes. Just think something like this can happen on a trail, say hitting a rock. $100 for a new wheel will not be a lot if you can fix it then
@@jeffhayes2288 Usually, 2 cone wrenches are needed. You can use a regular open end wrench (of the correct jaw size) that is ground down for the outer jam nut, but from my experience, a thin one specifically designed for this job is needed for the inner cone nut.
The single trickiest part of procedure is glanced over quickly. The final adjustment and final locking needs 3 wrenches or two wrenches and vise. This is a very very precise adjustment and locking. Often to be done a couple times to get it just right. Waaaay too many young mechanics are doing everything else right, but Neglecting the correct locking. this leads to a great deal of hubs/axle premature wear/issues, often taking back the advantages of rebuilding the hub.
@@slowroadsouth This video ua-cam.com/video/bgZe9q3xudw/v-deo.html goes into great detail about this one particular step. Putting the wheel in a vice when tightening, ensuring that the axel doesn't move, makes it much easier to make the precise adjustments needed and get the best possible fit, rather than just good enough.
third wrench is interchangeable with a Vise, or tightening only one attatching nut on the bike frame itself( but Not for QR axle!). I could explain it, but if the concept is new, it is better you experience it, you will learn more deeply that way. In Brief, in most modern hubs foudn in usa with loose balls, : 1. the cone nut and lock nut need to be sufficeintly tightened against each other 2. The tightness between above pair should be roughly the same on left and right side.3.The space or distance from Cone nut to cone nut that is ideal AFTER locking in sufficiently and balancedly(1 and 2) is a precise distance, this ideal distance should be coveted as it is important for the Efficiency and durability of the whole assembluy and the rolling of the wheel and transfer of forces from the road to the rider's legs( via tire,rim,nipple/spoke,hub/ BALLS / conenut,locknut,frame-fork,bottombracket,crank,pedal,legs!!!!) This is the Brief version in my way!
@@slowroadsouth Without a vise, you have one wrench(preferably fixed, usually a 17mm though not always) holding the locknut of an Already locked in side, this acts as a n 'anchor' or is the same thing as the vise in most official methods. The other sie of th eaxle , you use a cone wrench on the cone(adjustment) nut, and another Fixed wrench for unlocking, and re locking the final locknut. Often you have to do this a few times before you get a very precise adjustment locked in! Using 3 wrenches w two hands can be learned, pay attention to angles of the wrenches, and between wrenches( and dont be afraid to flip them around to get best leverage. It can help to have towels or gloves in the case of of non padded handles on wrenches, though not necesscary. Once you understand the task at hand, all the above will be learned naturally. It is the most logical way to do the task with the least elaboraTE setup. the OLD Fashioned way is to do it with the wheel installed in the bike. Those OLD bikes had either one or zero locknuts, the ATTATCHMENT TO the frAME acted to lock the adjustment in. Remember the modern bike came about due to innovation in BEARING BALL manufacturing. From that followed the car, plane.... The adjustability pressure on the balls was of PARAMOUNT importance to bike mechanics, that is why 99% of bikes IN THE WORLD today have adjustable bearing balls in all major load bearing joints!
@@ajkauly3682 I appreciate all the info!!!!! I'm learning to service my bearings and you totally demystified the cone tightening for me, I understand now why the LBS mechanics left a lil play and then told me to clap down on the QR till it's slightly tight.
also in a hollow axle, a very slight amount of play is ok, because the final adjustment mon the balls is your how much you clamp down with the QR!!! a perfect adjustment on the hub before install will result in a slightl tight adjustment after clamping. Though some settling could occur , making it looser, it may not occurr too!!!
I don't know if you have yet, but as someone in the middle of one of those fuckups, yep, that's exactly how it goes! IF everything is not super dirty, there's no rust or damage, it'd be so easy, a 3 hour task for a beginner like me to do both wheels. And yet, it's day 3 of my bike restoration project, 8 hours down the hole and more in research
Why not remove the hub bearing seal thing? Magnetic tool still good..but with seal in place how do you know if the hub inner race surface is OK and can clean all old grease and grit away?
Buy a new hub. This will entail relacing and retruing the wheel. If you want to reuse your spokes and rim with the new hub, make sure the new hub has the same pitch circle diameter (distance from center of hub spoke hole to opposite hub spoke hole on the same flange side) as your old hub. If it is not the same pitch circle diameter, then you need new spokes that are either longer or shorter that is appropriate for your rim/hub combination (there are online spoke length calculators to help you).
Its really weird how the bicycle industry is still using these archaic 100+ year old cone bearings on hubs while the rest of the world has long moved on to safer and longer lasting things like sealed cartridge bearings. I just checked my hubs and the cone bearings are almost completely gone at 10 months and 650 miles. Meanwhile, I have a 54 and 51 year old motorcycle using cartridge bearings with tens of thousands of miles on them. One of them spent a few decades out in the elements and it was legitimately destroyed by kids jumping it and throwing it around in the mud about 30 years ago. I changed those bearings after 50 years when I rebuilt it but honestly they would have been good to go for 50 more years if I repacked them with grease. The other one lived in a barn but its bearings are still just fine and within spec.
Agree. I have a well used Cannondale mountain bike from 1999 that has never needed its cartridge bearings replaced. My road bike with cone nuts and open ball bearings needed a rear hub service after 4 years of much less severe use.
I got a new bike and have only used it about 8 times at local trail. centers and I noticed the rear hub started to make a grinding noise so i opened it up and the barings on the drive side were completely worn out and rusted but the other side were completely fine. anyone know what went wrong?
Yes i do. On the 17th of May it started raining and about 15:45 your bike let in some water. As you hadn't used it for very long it started to rust. That is exactly what went wrong!
AXLE SPACING. good to take not of order of parts!. However, FIRSTLY, take note of spacing/rim position in intended bike frameset! make sure it is center/ed/able correctly In dealing w a used bike/wheel, sometimes people have gone and messed up the axle spacing, or sometimes the spacing of a REPLACEMENT wheel is different than frame intended for. MOre the case in rear wheels as front wheel fork spacing has much less variation in last 40 years especially.
WD-40 is a degreaser. More accurately, it's a solvent that will break down oils and grease, although there are different products that carry the "WD-40" name, so be sure to check the label.
Why not just replace the bearings at this point. I get trying to make it accessible for people, but cmon. If you are going to the trouble of servicing your bearings just replace them!
@BikeRadar my front wheel needs new bearings but not sure what size or type they are. we are going on a group MTB ride in a few days and won't have time for my front wheel bearings to be fixed, there is side to side play in the wheel, will this be fine for a few hours of trail riding (plus some jumps here and there)? Could this play cause an accident or me to stack?
Side-to-side play involves those double race/ two flats for skinny wrench. Cone wrenches necessary ? O try & approx. tightening or looseing w a regular thick spanner. Bearings clean and replace patiently
William McNear It may or may not be necessary, depending on how bad things got before you did the service. You'll inspect them for wear once you've taken everything apart, but you can usually tell long before if the bearings have gone. You might hear grinding coming from the hub when spinning the wheel, or there may be side-to-side play.
Generally useful, but for older bikes especially, a cone wrench on the 17 is very hard to hold still and use enough force to unlock. a wider fixed wrench may be needed to avoid slipping, potentially disfiguring the locking nut/wrench. Also why not use new high balls at this point? also degreaser could be removed before greasing. Degreaser should be used not liberally if at all. it makes cleanign EASIER, but a wooden toothpick carefully applied with a little chainoil works as well, and is less harmful to future grease, but shoudl neverthelss be wiped off.
SmellyT0fu Thanks for your feedback, but we don't use a B-cam for the visual interest or cuteness - although we do always shoot JT from his best side - so much as the flexibility that it allows during editing.
A great video thanks. But not complete. Let's say that when you inspected the bearing cups, they weren't bright and shiny. Maybe cracked or pitted or corroded. This is not so obvious as to how to remove the old cups and install new one's. It happens and so why not include this in the bearing servicing? Peter Smith
thechosendude More grease the better in a hub... unless you're a track cyclist. Some will remove the grease and replace with chain lube to aid rolling resistance. But we wouldn't recommend that outside.
Nick Fox If you get grease on a braking surface, it's important to clean it off with a degreaser ASAP. Won't cause any real harm to other components but will attract dirt, so we'd advise you clean any excess.
The way he adjusts the cones's tension and checks for play on the bearings at end is a horrible method. It's a really bad and imprecise technique . You need to press on the cone with your hand on one side and then wiggle the axle on the other side to check for a play.
Can you please stop editing your videos with that "all the rage" production style of filming with two fixed cameras and then cutting to the one you aren't looking at solely for variety in your edit. It looks stupid. When that happens on a live tv show it is considered a mistake by the presenter. It looks crap. Stop doing it. You are supposed to be talking to me/us. Yes. It's trendy. But it's crap.
Don't know why, but this video is the only one that perfectly explained to me how to adjust hub bearings. Excellent video. Thumbs up Mate! Cheers!
I got a bike tune up done today which included wheel bearing maintenance. My god, the bike feels like the day I bought it 6 years ago
With a quick release like this, you should set up a very little play outside of the bike, and check there is no play with wheels in and tight quick release. Otherwise the bearings will be too tight.
interesting
superb series of bike maintenance videos, just used the spoke replacement one and it made the job easy.
I was going to try to do it myself but it's more than I anticipated. I'll wait until I have the proper tools
Cone nut wrenches at bike stores are ridiculously priced. I have lots of inexpensive wrenches made in China that will fit the cone nut but are not the thickness of a cone nut wrench. I used a grinder to grind one down to the same thickness as a cone wrench.
Just ordered box of tools for $50 on ebay, will see how it goes. Just think something like this can happen on a trail, say hitting a rock. $100 for a new wheel will not be a lot if you can fix it then
@@jeffhayes2288 Usually, 2 cone wrenches are needed. You can use a regular open end wrench (of the correct jaw size) that is ground down for the outer jam nut, but from my experience, a thin one specifically designed for this job is needed for the inner cone nut.
The single trickiest part of procedure is glanced over quickly. The final adjustment and final locking needs 3 wrenches or two wrenches and vise. This is a very very precise adjustment and locking. Often to be done a couple times to get it just right. Waaaay too many young mechanics are doing everything else right, but Neglecting the correct locking. this leads to a great deal of hubs/axle premature wear/issues, often taking back the advantages of rebuilding the hub.
Learning about this process now. Could you tell more about the need for a third wrench and how it's used?
@@slowroadsouth This video ua-cam.com/video/bgZe9q3xudw/v-deo.html goes into great detail about this one particular step. Putting the wheel in a vice when tightening, ensuring that the axel doesn't move, makes it much easier to make the precise adjustments needed and get the best possible fit, rather than just good enough.
third wrench is interchangeable with a Vise, or tightening only one attatching nut on the bike frame itself( but Not for QR axle!). I could explain it, but if the concept is new, it is better you experience it, you will learn more deeply that way. In Brief, in most modern hubs foudn in usa with loose balls, : 1. the cone nut and lock nut need to be sufficeintly tightened against each other 2. The tightness between above pair should be roughly the same on left and right side.3.The space or distance from Cone nut to cone nut that is ideal AFTER locking in sufficiently and balancedly(1 and 2) is a precise distance, this ideal distance should be coveted as it is important for the Efficiency and durability of the whole assembluy and the rolling of the wheel and transfer of forces from the road to the rider's legs( via tire,rim,nipple/spoke,hub/ BALLS / conenut,locknut,frame-fork,bottombracket,crank,pedal,legs!!!!) This is the Brief version in my way!
@@slowroadsouth Without a vise, you have one wrench(preferably fixed, usually a 17mm though not always) holding the locknut of an Already locked in side, this acts as a n 'anchor' or is the same thing as the vise in most official methods. The other sie of th eaxle , you use a cone wrench on the cone(adjustment) nut, and another Fixed wrench for unlocking, and re locking the final locknut. Often you have to do this a few times before you get a very precise adjustment locked in!
Using 3 wrenches w two hands can be learned, pay attention to angles of the wrenches, and between wrenches( and dont be afraid to flip them around to get best leverage. It can help to have towels or gloves in the case of of non padded handles on wrenches, though not necesscary. Once you understand the task at hand, all the above will be learned naturally. It is the most logical way to do the task with the least elaboraTE setup. the OLD Fashioned way is to do it with the wheel installed in the bike. Those OLD bikes had either one or zero locknuts, the ATTATCHMENT TO the frAME acted to lock the adjustment in. Remember the modern bike came about due to innovation in BEARING BALL manufacturing. From that followed the car, plane.... The adjustability pressure on the balls was of PARAMOUNT importance to bike mechanics, that is why 99% of bikes IN THE WORLD today have adjustable bearing balls in all major load bearing joints!
@@ajkauly3682 I appreciate all the info!!!!! I'm learning to service my bearings and you totally demystified the cone tightening for me, I understand now why the LBS mechanics left a lil play and then told me to clap down on the QR till it's slightly tight.
also in a hollow axle, a very slight amount of play is ok, because the final adjustment mon the balls is your how much you clamp down with the QR!!! a perfect adjustment on the hub before install will result in a slightl tight adjustment after clamping. Though some settling could occur , making it looser, it may not occurr too!!!
Thank you. Your comment helped so much more than you could imagine, I didn't even realize yet that there was a hollow versus solid
Makes it look so easy, but I know that once I attempt it myself, I'm going to find one "gotcha" after another.
I don't know if you have yet, but as someone in the middle of one of those fuckups, yep, that's exactly how it goes! IF everything is not super dirty, there's no rust or damage, it'd be so easy, a 3 hour task for a beginner like me to do both wheels.
And yet, it's day 3 of my bike restoration project, 8 hours down the hole and more in research
Excellent vid and somehow relaxing
Your workshop is soo cool!
Excellent! Thank you!
Why not remove the hub bearing seal thing? Magnetic tool still good..but with seal in place how do you know if the hub inner race surface is OK and can clean all old grease and grit away?
No!! The degreaser will reach the internal bearing of the freehub if you do it like the video.
Great job . Thank you. FYI the background music made it hard to llisten to the whole vid.
Great video. I need mine serviced but this looks a little too complicated for me to tackle.
Your username is RepairDrive and your profile picture is a gear cassette
Very well explained. Interesting. But there is no way I am doing this. To much work and inconvenience for those of us who dont have a workshop.
2:59 “if worn, replace” OK, so why does nobody show this procedure?
3:00 well, I checked cone on the drive side and there is some wear, can it be replaced, or do I have to change whole hub?
Buy a new hub. This will entail relacing and retruing the wheel. If you want to reuse your spokes and rim with the new hub, make sure the new hub has the same pitch circle diameter (distance from center of hub spoke hole to opposite hub spoke hole on the same flange side) as your old hub. If it is not the same pitch circle diameter, then you need new spokes that are either longer or shorter that is appropriate for your rim/hub combination (there are online spoke length calculators to help you).
Or just get a new freehub body.
great video. thanks!
Hi, very informative video, thank you.
I'd like to service my rear hub bearings, and I was wondering if the disc rotor should be removed?
that would make it a bit more easy bcs you can see somethings better
but it isnt really necessary
Watch out for any oil residue on the disc, might affect breaking performance
Its really weird how the bicycle industry is still using these archaic 100+ year old cone bearings on hubs while the rest of the world has long moved on to safer and longer lasting things like sealed cartridge bearings. I just checked my hubs and the cone bearings are almost completely gone at 10 months and 650 miles. Meanwhile, I have a 54 and 51 year old motorcycle using cartridge bearings with tens of thousands of miles on them. One of them spent a few decades out in the elements and it was legitimately destroyed by kids jumping it and throwing it around in the mud about 30 years ago. I changed those bearings after 50 years when I rebuilt it but honestly they would have been good to go for 50 more years if I repacked them with grease. The other one lived in a barn but its bearings are still just fine and within spec.
Both my hubs on my Trek FX2 have gone just after the two year warranty 😖 hurts my wallet 🤦♂️
cost would increase, like the price inflation with “entry level” disc brakes bikes now 💸
Agree. I have a well used Cannondale mountain bike from 1999 that has never needed its cartridge bearings replaced.
My road bike with cone nuts and open ball bearings needed a rear hub service after 4 years of much less severe use.
My cup and cone bearings lasted at least 18 years
It's because of cost and simplicity.
thx helped a lot
can you replace these with equivalently sized ceramic ball bearings?
why didn't he remove the seal before taking out the ball bearings and re-installing?
Because it can be easily damaged. This is how shimano says you should do it.
What grease did you use? Thanks
Why are we still using cup and cone surely cartridge is better?
What good greese to use
I got a new bike and have only used it about 8 times at local trail. centers and I noticed the rear hub started to make a grinding noise so i opened it up and the barings on the drive side were completely worn out and rusted but the other side were completely fine. anyone know what went wrong?
Yes i do. On the 17th of May it started raining and about 15:45 your bike let in some water. As you hadn't used it for very long it started to rust. That is exactly what went wrong!
AXLE SPACING. good to take not of order of parts!. However, FIRSTLY, take note of spacing/rim position in intended bike frameset! make sure it is center/ed/able correctly In dealing w a used bike/wheel, sometimes people have gone and messed up the axle spacing, or sometimes the spacing of a REPLACEMENT wheel is different than frame intended for. MOre the case in rear wheels as front wheel fork spacing has much less variation in last 40 years especially.
Why grease the outside of the cassette hub ?
As far as I know it's not actually necessary, but will prevent any noise originating from it. I've seen it recommended in noise removal videos.
Can I use a WD40 instead of the degreaser?
WD-40 is a degreaser. More accurately, it's a solvent that will break down oils and grease, although there are different products that carry the "WD-40" name, so be sure to check the label.
Hello can you remove that hub? Ty
Bro are you the one that narrates the motivational videos ??
When he mixed bearings from drive side with non drive side I bailed.
Can u mix them .? What is wrong with that . I think they are of the same size ?
@@jagjosh2039 (I just learned) they tend to wear differently
Why not just replace the bearings at this point. I get trying to make it accessible for people, but cmon. If you are going to the trouble of servicing your bearings just replace them!
@@chrisshaw380 I miss your point. Rarely do the bearings need replacement on properly serviced hubs. What are you saying? I think I misunderstand you.
If you are talking about them wearing differently, thats propably in sub-thou dimensions. Absolute nonissue
Where I can purchase non drive side spacer and locknut ?? I can't see anything in google.
@BikeRadar my front wheel needs new bearings but not sure what size or type they are. we are going on a group MTB ride in a few days and won't have time for my front wheel bearings to be fixed, there is side to side play in the wheel, will this be fine for a few hours of trail riding (plus some jumps here and there)? Could this play cause an accident or me to stack?
Side-to-side play involves those double race/ two flats for skinny wrench. Cone wrenches necessary ? O try & approx. tightening or looseing w a regular thick spanner.
Bearings clean and replace patiently
Your maintenance playlist link does not work
did you replace the bearings with new ones or is this not necessary?
William McNear It may or may not be necessary, depending on how bad things got before you did the service. You'll inspect them for wear once you've taken everything apart, but you can usually tell long before if the bearings have gone. You might hear grinding coming from the hub when spinning the wheel, or there may be side-to-side play.
BikeRadar how big are the bearings
Gr8 vid!
❤❤❤❤❤❤
Generally useful, but for older bikes especially, a cone wrench on the 17 is very hard to hold still and use enough force to unlock. a wider fixed wrench may be needed to avoid slipping, potentially disfiguring the locking nut/wrench. Also why not use new high balls at this point? also degreaser could be removed before greasing. Degreaser should be used not liberally if at all. it makes cleanign EASIER, but a wooden toothpick carefully applied with a little chainoil works as well, and is less harmful to future grease, but shoudl neverthelss be wiped off.
Great instructions but please stop taking video shots of James at another angle. It's not cute nor cinematically interesting.
SmellyT0fu Thanks for your feedback, but we don't use a B-cam for the visual interest or cuteness - although we do always shoot JT from his best side - so much as the flexibility that it allows during editing.
I wouldn't listen to anyone by the handle of smellytofu @@bikeradar
I hope those rims got cleaned well before those brake pads touched them 😅🙈
A great video thanks. But not complete. Let's say that when you inspected the bearing cups, they weren't bright and shiny. Maybe cracked or pitted or corroded. This is not so obvious as to how to remove the old cups and install new one's. It happens and so why not include this in the bearing servicing? Peter Smith
Really making a mess with that grease...
thechosendude More grease the better in a hub... unless you're a track cyclist. Some will remove the grease and replace with chain lube to aid rolling resistance. But we wouldn't recommend that outside.
If my local bike shop got this much grease all over the wheel I'd be asking for a new wheel.
Nick Fox If you get grease on a braking surface, it's important to clean it off with a degreaser ASAP. Won't cause any real harm to other components but will attract dirt, so we'd advise you clean any excess.
+Nick Fox
With a proper clean-up, you'd never know the difference.
good video, stupid background music.
2:48 I don't think it's a good idea for weekend mechanic. too risky.
Great video but Crap music not needed
Get rid of the annoying background noise! (Music?)
Get over it grandpa
i actually like it😅
The way he adjusts the cones's tension and checks for play on the bearings at end is a horrible method. It's a really bad and imprecise technique . You need to press on the cone with your hand on one side and then wiggle the axle on the other side to check for a play.
Can you please stop editing your videos with that "all the rage" production style of filming with two fixed cameras and then cutting to the one you aren't looking at solely for variety in your edit. It looks stupid. When that happens on a live tv show it is considered a mistake by the presenter. It looks crap. Stop doing it. You are supposed to be talking to me/us. Yes. It's trendy. But it's crap.
This would be a really useful video if it were not for the obnoxious music. It’s not so useful if you have to mute the soundtrack to save your sanity.
yooooooooooooo