Hubertina

I bought a used Giant Anthem X2 about 9 years ago.

(I live in a climate in which there are only a few months per year of nice riding weather. I'm 70 and rarely ride more than 10 miles per outing a few times per week, practically never in rain and always on the street. This is why the original bearings are still on the bike and most ae still in good condition after 9 years.)

I would like to replace all of the rear suspension/frame sealed bearings. I'd rather buy the bearings, either individually or by a complete set, before removing the bearings and measuring them and ordering them and waiting and losing some precious summer riding time. In other words, I'd like to have all the parts and tools at hand and then spend a day replacing the bearings.

I've checked the Giant site, but as far as I can tell there is no information there about the suspension/frame bearing sizes for the X2; nor can I find a service manual for the X2 after a consdierable search on the internet.

The X2 has a vertically-mounted rear shock. I'd post photos of the bike, its suspension and bearings, but I do not yet have the 10 posts required to allow me to do that.

Does anyone know of a source for the sizes of all of the frame/suspension bearings on the X2?

While I'm typing, does anyone know of a source for the service manual for the X2, specifically?

Thanks for any information.

FastJake

These full suspension bikes can be hard to track down parts for. Which is one of the reasons I now avoid them. I once took a <10 year old Trek into a Trek store trying to do the same thing and they looked at me like I was from another planet. It was a top of the line carbon bike too...

Sorry I can't be of more help, but just keep searching I guess. Or try contacting Giant directly. Is anything wrong with the bearings now? If it's not broken don't fix it.

Hubertina

To answer your question first, I was starting to get some rather annoying "creaking" from the bearings area, particularly when I'm pedaling up an incline. I say "was" because, using the point of a needle, a couple of days ago I pried up the outer edges of the seals in the sealed bearings that I could access and, using a hypodermic syringe, I injected some very heavy, very sticky, astronomically-expensive automotive differential oil into what I presume is the grease inside the bearings. The oil has such high viscosity that practically none escaped from around the edge of the seals. Anyway, the creaking was instantly vastly reduced, but not completely eliminated to silence. This is why I'd like to replace the suspension bearings.


(Amazingly to me, the BB bearings, the wheel-hub bearings and the headset bearings seem to still be just fine. I blasted the chain and rings using a pressure washer; applied on them a thin coating of the same liquid-gold differential oil and, voila, shifting is now as good as the day I bought the bike. So that's good.)


I completely understand what you say about parts being hard to track down. If I had it to do over again, I'd buy something much simpler, with fewer parts, etc. I'd probably buy a no-suspension bike and install a shock-absorbing seat post on it, at most. But I was sucked in by all the full-suspension hype and a good deal on the X2 bobbed up. I bit the attractive lure and now I'm fully hooked, "all in".


I figure that if I do a full-bearing-set replacement now, in ten years I'll be either dead or 80 and, if the latter, it'll probably be time to quit riding anyway.


I'll contact Giant and see what I can get out of them. Hopefully they'll at least have the X2 service manual in pdf. If another X2 owner has that pdf and would be willing to make a copy and share it with me, that would be great.


Thanks for your comment and advice, FastJake.

Edit: Now that I think more about it, now that the creaking is far less than it was before the bearings' recent lubrication, it might be best for me to wait until the snow starts falling (around here, possibly mid-to-late September), then remove all the bearings, measure them precisely and order replacements. I'll have to buy a bearing-removal/installation press and the Shimano Deore XT crank-bearing pre-load tool to install the crank after removal. Luckily, all of this should not be that expensive. (Famous last words.)