Yes, there are cartridge bearings that aren’t sealed. I haven’t seen one in too many bicycle applications. Adlll of the cartridge bearings I’ve seen in bicycle applications are sealed.

Oxidation, like most chemical processes is slowed by temperature. Evaporation is also slowed by temperature. Letting a bicycle dry in the cold isn’t going to make it rust any more rapidly nor necessarily more slowing because of these competing processes. Cold weather, however, is usually accompained by road salt application because people in cars need it. Salt, specially the chloride ion in salt, is very efficient at oxidizing iron which then exchanges the chloride for oxygen. The released chloride can go back to pluck out more iron, which is exchanged with oxygen, and so on. Having salt water around speeds the process. As long as the chloride is in contact with the iron, it will happily remove iron atoms.

Similar chemistry happens with aluminum.

Taking the seals off of a seal cartridge bearing is more likely to damage the seals and result in ingress of water. Better to just leave them alone and use them until they fail. They are meant to be a consumable item and having one fail is not catastrophic. You simply replace the bearing for minimal cost and effort.

Loose bearings, on the other hand, do need to be maintained often. This is because the seals are usually less effective and ingress of contaiminants can result in damage to the cones and/or cup. The cones can be replaced but the cups can’t. A damaged cup means a replaced wheel which is much more expensive than simply replacing the bearings.

Again, I don’t agree. Sand is abrasive no matter what medium is used to carry it and sand is every where. Some of us even intentially go out and ride in dirty conditions. I can hear the sand grating on the rims whenever I apply the brakes. Granted it seems like the brakes sound more grating when they are wet but the grit is still there in dry conditions. My rims, tires and brake pads are covered in dust in the dry as well as in the wet.

Brake dust is also composed of mostly nonabrasive material. Brake pads are rubber and any dust created is just rubber. Aluminum oxide is an abrasive but it’s also tough to get off the metal surface. The pads wear faster than the rims for this reason.

I agree that seatpost should be greased but that is usually just a one time application. A layer grease is very effective at preventing galvanic corrosion and is very unlikely to be washed away. Most seat posts aren’t lubricated from the factory which is why they can get stuck in a frame. But, once greased, it’s not something that needs to be done all that often.

Cleaning cassettes may be done for aesthetic reasons but there is no real mechanical reason to clean them. They are a consumable like a chain.

As to Velox causing more corrosion, really? Water is going to come through the spoke nipple from above. The rim tape isn’t going to cause any more corrosion than that. I’ve seen a lot of corroded spoke nipples in my time at my local co-op and few of them have been associated with Velox tapes. Most of them are on old bikes with factory...i.e. rubber...rim tapes. If anything, rims with Velox tape are more likely to be less corroded because those wheels are properly built with lubricated spoke nipples.

Why? A chain is a consumable. It will last about 3000 miles, no matter how much you clean it. I agree that people tend to over lubricate the chain but I also disagree with people using oil. If people didn’t use oil, they wouldn’t have to deal with the oily mess. I clean a chain once when I put it on the bike. It never gets cleaned again nor does it need to.

You can begin by being respectful as per Forum rules. I disagree with you but I have not questioned your intelligence.

I am intimately familiar with a vast quantity of bicycle bearing applications. I have personally owned 38 bicycles over 40+ years or riding and I have done my own maintenance on all of them. I have owned, used, broken and worn out a lot of equipment over that period of time. I also happen to have volunteered nearly every Saturday over the last 8 years at my local co-op where I see every type of bearing for bicycles in every conceivable condition on over 11,000 bicycles. I’m pretty sure that I know a thing or two about bearings.

The kinds of seals I’m talking about are well sealed.

I agree that many bearings aren’t “sealed” against water ingress but those are generally old loose bearing designs with poor seals. Contrary to what some people state, I have never found “cartridge bearings” being used on inexpensive bicycles...and I work on a lot of very inexpensive bikes. All of them...without exception...have loose bearings in all applications and they are all nonsealed.

I know you didn’t know say anything about the speed of oxidation. My point is that you didn’t consider it. It has to be considered along with other factors when considering oxidation of metals.

By the way, simply wiping a bike dry does nothing to address the places where water might do damage. The places where rust can do damage is inside places where a surface wipe down will do not nothing.

If you are going to “check” sealed bearings, the only way to do that is to pry off the seals which can damage them. You can’t tell if a sealed bearing has water or other contamination without opening them. Surface inspection just doesn’t work. But they don’t need to be inspected as they are sealed against the kind of contamination that will ruin loose bearing units.

As for disposablity, sealed cartridge bearings...which are used in far more applications than the unsealed ones you describe...aren’t meant to be rebuilt. Even the unsealed ones can’t be rebuilt. They are meant to be replaced when they fail. Loose bearing systems have some of the same aspects. The cones and bearings are meant to be used and replaced when they are worn. The difference is that sealed bearings last a lot longer with a lot less attention than loose units do. Mine have 25,000+ miles over nearly a decade on them without anything being done to the bearings. A similar loose bearing unit would have had cones, bearings and grease replaced much more often and thus cost far more.

The other type of cartridge bearing you are talking about is very rare in my experience and would require far more replacement and thus more cost.


Again, “brake dust” using rubber pads is not an abrasive. Nor, for that matter, is the brake dust from hub mounted disc pads. Both are relatively soft organic compounds.

The act of rubbing rubber across a soft metal surface in contact with another rubber surface that insulates the charges generated by that rubbing so dust particles will readily stick to the rim. I would hypothesize that the reason for increased wear in wet weather has less to do with the abrasive on the rim and far more to do with the increased used of the brakes due to the wet weather and the lack of adhesion of the rubber to the road. In other words, riders in rain (as well as snow and ice) are using their brakes more to slow than they do in dry conditions.

The rim failures I’ve experience have all been on mountain bikes or on bikes with high mileages. Both are more related to brake useage than to the conditions they are used under. I’m not exactly unfamiliar with riding in bad conditions, either.

Seatposts fit closely into the frame. Grease is hydrophobic and thus resists water infiltration. Properly greased, a post won’t lose the grease through any means that I can think of so there is no reason to constantly check the grease level on a seatpost. If you are in the habit of removing the post and removing the grease, you are much more likely to have problems with corrosion but left alone, the grease will do it’s job without the need for constant replacement.

A threaded stem may require a bit more grease because the fit between the steer tube and the stem isn’t a close as a seatpost but it still shouldn’t need to be done regularly. Once or twice a century should be enough.

On the other hand, a “bright” person dumped the threaded system for the much more robust threadless system long ago. I’ve never found a threadless stem seized on a steer tube. Perhaps it could happen but it is much less likely.

No, there is no need to clean a chain...if you use the proper lubricant. Oil has to be cleaned off because it gets all over everything. A wax based lubricant doesn’t have to be cleaned off because it falls off the outside and doesn’t get all over the bike, rider, house, cat and anything else within a quarter mile radius. Since the mileage on the chain is roughly the same and, the lubrication interval is the same in my experience, there is really no reason to use oil. I only have to clean my chain once and never have to clean cassettes.

As for the particles being left behind after water, it’s the same as what I have described in dry conditions. The particles get there in any case.

The tape might hold some water but, in my experience, water is difficult to get into the rim in the first place. There aren’t many openings. Even if the water does get into the rim, rim tapes are only in contact with the spokes in single walled rims. Water in a double walled rim is going to be in direct contact with the spokes.

But, as I said, water is in contact with the spoke/nipple interface from the outside which is far more damaging than the tape is.

And, do you take the tires off and dry the inside of the wheels as well? That’s a lot of OCD there.


There are a lot of items on a bike that are going to wear out no matter how much you clean. Chains don’t last all that long. 3000 to 4000 miles is a pretty good average and it is fairly narrow. You won’t find a whole lot of chains falling outside of that range. Even if you do, it’s not like you’ll get double the mileage and save all that much money. You could clean a chain everyday (as has actually been suggested in the Forums) but you’ll still get within the that average.

On the other hand, cleaning a chain everyday (or even often) produces more waste and disposal issue than not cleaning it.

Chainrings and cassettes or rear gears also have a wear interval that is relatively narrow. It’s longer but they are still consumables which means “use them and throw them away”. It’s not like you can reforge the chainrings or recut the teeth to make them usable again.

Nor do I agree that the torque on the chain has much influence on the mileage. I use chains in mountain biking, commuting, loaded touring, loaded off-road touring as well as just recreational riding with low gears under a lot of torque. Mileage is still around 3000 miles.