capnjonny 

Yesterday for the second time in a month I came across a strange situation. After stripping an old rigid frame Hard Rock and taking the cranks off I was in the process of removing the bearings and the bearings on the drive side would not come out. Thinking the bearing race was stuck I reached in with a small pick and tried to pull it out. No movement. I squirted some solvent in the cavity and cleaned it out thoroughly then looked inside. there was something not right about the bearing race . Figuring it had been welded in place by rust, I tried removing the bearing cup only to fail . that sucker was in there tight! finally, my friend Jack took a long screw driver and inserted in through the hole in the cup and caught the edge of the race and hit it hard with a hammer. Something fell out but it wasn't a bearing race. What we found was a cup shaped "washer" that was apparently used during assembly to hold loose bearings in the drive side bearing cup. That is only the second time in 10 years working at the bike Exchange that I have seen this. The first time I was successful in removing the cup and just replaced it with a new one and caged bearings.


Has anyone else ever encountered this. any insight appreciated.

Andrew R Stewart 

Yes this is not uncommon with lower cost Asian produced bikes. The balls (usually held in a retaining ring) are captured in the cup by a press fitted "washer/dust cap". This quickens assembly of the thousands of bike some factories produce weekly. Pretty simple to punch out the washer/internal dust cap, clean and relube as usual for loose balled units. Andy

Andrew R Stewart 

Sure in a no cost matters world. But that's not what most of the production sector of our passion can get away with. If you can load the bb cup with ball bearings and lube for less then, and also shorten the time/ease the cup's install takes... and you make hundreds a day... How many hours does it take to make a bike? Or how few hours can that factory get it done in?

Most of the bikes with such time/cost savings design are generally found in the more/most basic of cost range. Want a better bike? Spend more. Sorry but that's a pretty easy thing for me to say.

capnjonny 

Thanks for the replies. I can definitely see that this could make assembling the bottom bracket easier if they were using loose balls. I'm surprised I hadn't seen it before , especially since most of the bikes I work on are vintage. Why not do the same on the non drive side too? As for caged bearing cages deteriorating I have not really seen that. Burned bearings, yes but the cages are usually o/k unless the bike has been under water for a while.

HillRider

OK, your out-of-pocket cost was small but how much time did you spend and what would you have had to pay to have someone else do the work? Even at $3/hour it would have added significant cost to the finished bike.

dedhed

https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...emoveable.html

EddyR

Cubewheels. I can understand your reason for keeping a low end bike going. I was a bike flipper for many years and only did high end road bikes. I had friends who had very low end bikes and they new I would gladly work on there bikes. I made them stay and work on the bike the best they could. I would not fix it unless they stayed and did part of the work themself. Most of those bikes are still in use. I have been retired for 20 years so there was no lost wages on my part. I gave a few road bikes away to people who wanted to ride but could not afford to buy even a used road bike.
I have seen some Walmart bikes with bb so badly put together I could not repair them.
ed