late 80s Schwinn Woodlands 24", bearing parts
 

Hello. New here. I am the original owner of a Schwinn Woodlands 24" 10 speed that I got new in April 1988. For sitting outside for 31 years it's held up very well, almost no rust on it, but I need to do some work on the headset and crank bearings. I also need to tighten the rear wheel bearings, there is some play there. But it rolls smooth, no improper noises. Would be a good time to go through the whole bike, now I have a garage to work in and store it. I'd post pics but I don't have enough posts yet.

I have the serial number and tried looking it up on various sites, and it tells me it's a 1950's serial number. Nope.

Any tips for sourcing the correct parts? Crank is Tracer, rims are Wein Mann, shift mechanism is Shimano.

I've done bike basics like brakes and shift mechanisms. I'm an engineer and I've done car engine swaps, so I'm not afraid of mechanical things. Just not gotten that far into a bike before.

This is the site I use most looking up old Schwinn stuff as far as looking up model information. Are you trying to keep it period correct?

http://www.trfindley.com/flschwinn_1981_1990/index.html

Hmm, I get a broken link.

I'd like to keep it stock looking externally, for the most part. But as far as I know, I'm not replacing any external parts.

I fixed the link. It takes you to the 80-90 catalogs.

Wheels, headset, cranks all use standard size bearing balls. Take stuff apart, measure bearings with a harbor freight digital caliper or equal. Go on line or your local bearing supply and buy grade 25 balls in the sizes you need and replace, regrease, adjust. You'll need some special tools like cone wrenches and probably a crank puller (if I recall a Tracer is a cotterless crank) and some marine wheel bearing grease. Might as well replace the chain while you're rehabbing it. Youtube, park tool, RJ the bike guy, Sheldon brown, My ten speeds all good sources of info.

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize they were just standard balls to be replaced. I imagined them as tapered roller bearing assemblies. I do have a good caliper and micrometer.

I'll have to see if I end up needing the crank puller. I have some thin wrenches, thankfully I can make some tools at work too. Like what looks like a 3 notch spanner nut on the non-sprocket side of the crank. Would be better than chewing up the knurl with a pipe wrench.

I rode for a couple hours last night, now the rain is here until at least the end of the weekend. Should have some time to get into it.

Or just line them up along a ruler.
Four 1/4" balls magically = 1"
sixteen 3/16" balls = 3".
thirty two 5/32" balls = 5"

It's an 80's Schwinn, nothing that exotic, a step above sintered bronze bushings. Honestly you could even reuse the balls, but they're cheap enough I just replace.

I got the headset apart last night. The top bearing assembly looks ok. The bottom one is completely disintegrated. The cage has just 1 divider left, out of 16 I think. Explains why it was sometimes loose and sometimes not, when all the balls went to one side it would loosen up. Thankfully I can use the top one to see what I need for replacements.

Then I started at the crank. First the crank caps looked good but were extremely brittle from UV, so they came out in pieces. Then I removed the nuts. It has a square crank, and I definitely need the puller to remove the pedal arms.

Looks like I can get a crank puller from the local bike shop tonight for $15. Better than ordering online and waiting.

Years ago I tore down another bike frame and fork I found in scrap, it was in good shape but missing a lot of parts. And I had saved the head and crank bearings and cones and caps, put them in a sealed plastic box. But unfortunately the headset cages aren't the same diameter. Looking online it appears that Schwinn is different from everybody else. Maybe I'll get lucky and the crank bearings match.

You don't have to use caged balls for the headset or bottom bracket. Loose balls work fine, better in some respects. Put in enough to fill, then remove one ball.

That's great info, thanks! Agreed, less load on each ball, less point load in the cup/cone. Just like how they build the industrial slewing rings where I work.

Got the crank apart. Everything was disintegrated and the balls were just loose in there. Tried to remove the cup on sprocket side but it wouldn't budge. But I was able to clean it up in place. Once I got everything cleaned up it looked pretty good. Turned out my spare set of crank bearings are a perfect fit.

So off to the bike shop to get some bearings for the headset. And while I'm at it, I'll have them remove the freewheel so I can get at the drive side bearing. I tried making a tool to remove it but it wouldn't budge. The rear wheel bearings are just a tad loose so I want to pull those apart and clean and repack them too. Will do the same with the fronts while I am at it. The bearing that came out of the non drive side looked to be in nice shape.

Took an additional 2 ft extension on my 18" breaker bar but the freewheel came loose. Wanted to be careful not to bend the spokes. So I pulled apart the freewheel and cleaned and regreased that too. Wheel bearings done, headset bearings done, crank bearings done, new pedals. Should be way better than it was.

Now it's supposed to rain the rest of the week. So maybe I'll work on replacing the cables. They work fine but the jackets look horrible.