Noise (and Grease) in Campy Ceramic Crank Bearings
 

I have Campy SR 11 speed with the standard factory ceramic bearings. ...have always had issues with noise. It seems like the bearings tend to pick up road grit easily and when they are perfectly clean they seem to work well and are mostly noise free. ...but if they get some dirt in them, then I get annoying noise. Since I live near the ocean, it's a bit difficult to keep everything out of the BB when you've got a bit of salt in the air. I've been following some cleaning instructions I read somewhere recommending that these type of bearings should be cleaned very aggressively (with cranks pulled from the bike) with brake cleaner, wd40 and similar before being hosed off thoroughly and then dried with compressed air before being oiled with extremely light sewing machine oil since the ceramic bearings really won't even need any oil or grease. ...but each time I've done that, the bearing noise eventually returns after not all that much cycling. I cycled in a hard rain last week and the noise got so annoying this week that I pulled the entire crank and did the above maintence. Before, I could feel and hear grittiness when I spun the bearings by hand. Afterwards, they were completely smooth and would spin nearly forever without stopping. Both bearings (and the crank) are relatively new (less than 2 years) and so are the cups. Everything's installed and torqued to specs. ...and no, I don't use a hose directinng water toward the BB shell when cleaning the frame.

This time I put on some very light bearing grease into/around the bearings - Slick Honey - to see if that might keep thing quieter for longer since I really don't want to pull off my crank regularly and I really don't care about losing some hypothetical watt or two from the grease.

Does anyone else have similar problems? Any solution? How long do you ride before cleaning these things or do you ever clean them?

Jeff

So.... can you post a link to where you read this maintenance routine with the extremely light sewing machine oil?
Slick Honey might be too light... it's for suspension forks.
I would think regular bearing grease would be preferred.
I didn't know ceramic bearings didn't require grease!

I've seen the recommendation for sewing machine oil a few places. Since I'm new to the forum, I can't post a URL yet, but I just found one of these recommendations on the Weight Weenies forum. The guy posting there said that this was actually recommended by Campy.

I think that's where I saw the maintence routine also. Someone was asking about replacing their CULT bearings and a mechanic recommended that they first clean them very thoroughly to the point that high pressure water would spin the bearings around and the use of brake cleaner or similar to do the same. ...and then follow up with compressed air. The guy who asked said that it worked very well for him and I've tried also and it worked well for me. ...but the Campy CULT ceramic bearings (and others) don't have an actual seal on them. Instead, they have a dust deflector thing (or whatever they call it) that sits outside of the bearing and doesn't touch it. That might help keep out the worst of the dirt, but junk can still get by and into the bearings. As I understand it, the less-expensive Campy bearings are sealed, but the higher-end stuff they rely on more maintenance. Keep in mind that they weren't suggesting this for routine and constant maintence, but rather for cases where you get dirt into them over a few months.

I thought slick honey was a bearing grease. I think it's one of the ones that recommended in a few hub bearings. Perhaps I should try something else the next time I pull the crank. As I mentioned, I might be having more problems than typical just since I'm near the beach, but it just seems that I'm getting noise returning far too soon and was wondering whether a bit of light grease might help.

It's not a problem on the TdF. That's just the sound of progress. And the frequent deep maintenance, that's progress too. Just ask Campy.

I'd change the bearings out to the standard type with seals and BB cups that have seals. You can probably ride for a year or two with before cleaning and greasing. The super record name may be impressive, but the high maintenance sucks. I've settled on chorus parts as the best bang for the buck.