wolfchild

Sealed cartridge bearings aren't 100% waterproof. If you submerge them regularly or if you spray high pressure spray at them, water will get in and contiminate the inside of the bearing. The reason why automotive bearings last for so long is because of the design and how they are positioned inside the actual wheel hub. The hub and various seals and shields, protect the bearing from dirt and water intrusion under normal driving conditions. What will shorten the lifespan of automotive bearings is going off road and driving through deep water and deep mud frequently....The bearing used on bicycle bottom brackets and hubs are not really protected very well and if you point a high pressure spray at them water will get inside. That's why full fenders can extend the life of bottom bracket and headset bearing because they prevent road spray from going directly sprayed at the bearings. The fender acts as a shield.

Fredo76

Standard Operating Procedure in Tucson, Arizona, in the 1970s, was to blast the drivetrain at the car wash, pointing the nozzle at the back of the freewheel to make the chain spin around backwards so it all gets cleaned. If you were quick, you could rinse and 'wax', before the time ran out. Then, bounce the bike around a bit to shake the big drops off, get on, and ride it home, by which time it will be dry, and ready to oil.

It works on white (or any color) Tressostar or other quality cloth handlebar tape, too.

NoWhammies

What about the Muc Off pressure washer? Anyone have experience with using that pressure washer? Muc Off claims the lighter pressure will not damage the bearings or damage the paint. Interested to hear some real world experiences.

rsbob 

Would be interesting to see if they offer any type of guarantee with that.

cyccommute 

I don’t agree but what would it matter if water did contaminate a sealed cartridge bearing? The seal is far better than many people here are suggesting but, if the bearing does get contaminated, it is fairly simple to just replace the bearing. Cup and cone bearings can be damaged irreparably…especially the cup…due to contamination but for a seal bearing, damage isn’t much of a concern.

Some of the bearings are protected. Many of the smaller bearings on the steering linkage are not that well shielded at all. The old grease points that we used to have to lubricate regularly…ball joints, universal joints, steering linkages, etc…are very poorly protected. I’ve driven trucks regularly off-road, in rain, and in snow and slush for thousands of miles without ever having to replace any of those bearings nor having to do anything to them. Bicycle bearings aren’t subjected to anywhere near the wet conditions nor speed of that spray nor duration nor load that your average family sedan experiences. A bit of spray from a power spraying isn’t going to instantly dissolve the seals.

I don’t know what bottom brackets you use but since I started using cartridge bearing bottom brackets, I have no a single one on roughly 30 bikes and maybe that many upgrades ever fail. That’s square taper BB, external bearing bottom brackets, and even the supposedly much weaker ISIS and Octalink bottom brackets. I don’t generally use fenders nor do I believe that they are all that effective on keeping water out of the BB. I have at least one bottom bracket that has in excess of 20,000 miles on it and it is still going strong.

Going further, I see the roughest of rough bikes at my local co-ops. If anything is going to fail, these are the places to see it. I seldom see a cartridge bearing bottom bracket that is even rough, much less damaged. I would estimate the number of bottom brackets that are actually damaged and/or worn out to be less than 1 in 100. Ones that are a bit rough but still usable are maybe 5 in 100.

Cup and cone BB from the 80s and very early 90s most certainly are going to be more problematic but once seal cartridge bearing bottom brackets came along, the problems with them are few and very far between.

PeteHski

You can't argue with anecdotes. XT BBs used to last about a year on my mtb when I rode in all conditions. Now I tend to avoid the worst of the wet/muddy conditions and the bearings last far longer. Same goes for sealed suspension bearings. Now they run smoothly for years without maintenance.

Maelochs

Again, where are the real Scientists? Buy fifteen bikes, blast five right on the bearings with a pressure washer, ride five through sandy streams, and wash five with damp rags. Ride each 20K miles. measure wear with the most precise means possible after all that ....

Then we can have 15 anecdotes.

cyccommute 

I suppose you can’t. However, I’ll point out again that I work at a co-op where we see the worst bikes that are still moving. Worn out or damaged bottom brackets are a very rear occurrence. That’s thousands of cartridge bottom brackets of every possible flavor.

On my own bikes, I ride them in all conditions up to and including snow/slush. I have yet to wear one out in nearly 30 years of use of this kind of bottom bracket.

PeteHski

These co-op bikes sound amazing. Truly bomb-proof.

cyccommute 

Your bottom brackets sound truly the opposite of bomb-proof.

Just out of curiosity, how many XT bottom brackets did you go through? One? Fifty? One of mine has 25,000 miles on it and is still going strong. I’d really like to know what you are doing wrong so I can get another 25,000 out of mine.

gringomojado

Need more samples to be statistically significant

PeteHski

Maybe half a dozen on a few bikes over about the same number of years. This would have been around 2004-2010. Just standard XT BBs of the era. I rode them in all kinds of mud, clay, water, sleet and snow. They typically lasted about a year before they felt crunchy with the chain removed. Relatively cheap and very easy to replace, so that’s what I typically did every season. It was very clear that crap was getting beyond the seals and contaminating the grease even without pressure washing them.

The same goes for sealed cartridge suspension bearings. Those typically only lasted one season too. Seals were not that amazing and these were top quality SKF.

Of course I could have carried on riding with crunchy BB and suspension bearings like many people routinely do. It’s not like they seized up or anything.

So anyway about your 25k mile BB. Have you ever opened it up and checked the grease and wear? Is it still super smooth running without a hint of creaking? What sort of a beating has it actually taken on the trails? I know you are going to tell me it’s like new.

GhostRider62

I've had Trek pressed fit BB last 3 maybe 4,000 miles and another bike has a Phil that is 40 years and many, many tens of thousands of miles

Too many variables. Type of seals. Rider loads. Environmental conditions. Maintenance. Bearing quality. Crappy shell mold. Etc. NTN LLB and Ceramic Speed are getting most of my N = 1 anecdotal use and both are smooth as a baby's butt although I only ride 7-9,000 miles per year since 2020. I don't even keep 6806 bearing in "stock" because they do last but wheel bearings? They wear faster whether load or water, I don't know.

KPREN

Cartridge bearing and not 100% water proof and neither is the rest of a bike. Fortunately, it is very easy to pop the seals out of a sealed cartridge bearing, wash wash the bearing out, repack them with grease, pop the seals back in and get more miles out of them

wolfchild

The whole idea behind cartridge bearings is to avoid having to repack them. That's why most people choose them so that they don't have to mess around maintaining them. If a cartridge bearing wears out you just replace the whole unit.

cyccommute 

GCN did a pretty convincing job of doing that experiment. Many not with replicates but they did do almost 4 minutes of direct and, more importantly, close spray from the jet washer. At the end of 4 minutes they had some infiltration of water but not much. That’s far more close, direct spray than the vast majority of people are going to do while washing a bike.

cyccommute 

Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not a stupid person. I know what a bad bottom bracket feels like…I haven’t seen too many but enough to know how to diagnose one. I also know what a good bottom bracket (or other sealed bearing) feels like. Yes, mine is super smooth running without any creaking. It feels smooth when the crank is turned with and without a chain in place. It feels just like every other bearing in the 15 or so bikes I have in my garage. The bottom bracket is mounted on my commuter bike and sees service throughout the year. Snow, slush, rain, dust, etc. It’s not on my off-road bike which you might object to but I have other bearings on my mountain bikes that may not have as much mileage but have the added off-road use that my commuter bike lacks. Again, I’ve never had a cartridge bearing bottom bracket nor headset go bad.

I have had to replace a few hub bearings…maybe 5 or 6. Only 2 of those were actually on hubs that I used and the rest were on hubs that I bought at a swap meet for cheap because the bearings were seized. I changed those out and the hub is currently in use. That’s 5 or 6 bearing replacement out of perhaps 30 sets of wheels. It just not as much of a problem as a lot of people make it out to be.

I will grant that I don’t power wash my bikes daily nor weekly nor even monthly. I use products that don’t require a lot of constant cleaning. A bit of dirt, dust, or cow crap on the bike doesn’t need to be washed off every time it gets on the bike. But I’m also not worried that the bearings are made of sugar and can’t stand an occasional trip to the car wash.

Maelochs

I have no clue about any of this .... and like yourself and most everybody else, I will do what I feel comfortable doing based on my own experience. I don't doubt @cyccommute, nor do I doubt 't @PeteHski and each has such different experiences .... It might come down to personal situations which might or might not apply to anyone else.

For myself I will wash my bike with a garden hose and adjustable nozzle, and I will try not to aim at any bearings directly even with that low-pressure stream ... just because I have no real clue about my specific situation, and because I can wash my be excellently without aiming right at the bearing housings. I have not worn out a BB since the cottered crank days, but back when I used to commute on old-school and very cheap bikes I ate them up regularly. I have heard that HollowTech I was water-soluble (so to speak but never had an issue with HollowTech II .... and really don't care. What I have been doing seems to be working .... and besides, my whole fleet is about to crumble to dust because I wash them with Simple Green.

nomadmax 

Why ask after using a power washer?

striker65

I don't power wash but one time I thought why not dry the bike with a lawn blower. After I did that the freewheel wouldn't ratchet. Must have blown a speck of dirt into it. Replaced the freewheel and after a period of time it started working again, now I have a backup.

spelger

Dried worms? Where the heck are you riding?

spelger

Because the OP only found out it may be detrimental after the fact. A simple case of leaping then looking. I did that once into a pool with a cell phone in my pocket.

PeteHski

Same goes for me. My only point in this thread was that pressure washing bikes is not really necessary and not good for sealed bearings if you blast them directly at close range. But it can be done without damage if you are careful.

We seem to have differing experiences with the effectiveness of sealed bearings to prevent water and crap ingress in all conditions and pressure washing. I wonder what I was doing wrong? Maybe XT BBs circa 2005 were just rubbish? I don’t see these problems today, but my bikes have a much easier life.

Out of interest I Googled to see how my fellow Brit mountain bikers get on with XT BBs on the trails and it seems they are much more in line with my experiences than yours ie doing well if you get more than a season before they die due to water/crap ingress:-

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/shimano-hollow-tech-2-bottom-bracket-how-long-does-yours-last/

cyccommute 

Go watch the GCN video. They do the hard work of demonstrating that power washers don’t harm bearings. If that isn’t enough, here’s something from NSK bearings. The tests they did are 2 hours in length using water jets of close to 1600 psi. Granted there are differences between bearings but NSK who makes the bearings seem to feel they aren’t delicate.

I recall all the hullabaloo early external bearings. I also recall the same hullabaloo about ISIS bearings. Again, I have not had any bearings that I personally own fail. I see very few failures even with handling dozens to hundreds of used sealed bottom brackets of all flavors at my co-op.

GhostRider62

It is important to recognize the NSK seals on those tests are not what most cyclist have. I know you know but it is worth saying that the seals have the majority of frictional losses followed by the grease. Consequently, many high end bikes have less effective seals and grease formulations that are not as effective against water intrusion. For example, NTN LLB have non contacting seals. Water will get in. These bearings are "only" $25 each and I doubt the bikes you have seen have had such bearings. And let's not even take about CeramicSpeed. The fact is, generalizing isn't easy to do. Blasting high pressure on the bearings and grease used on most my bikes would be damned foolish. My Mt bike and touring bike have very robust bearing seals and grease and would very, very likely not have an issue with my power washer. But really how hard it is to direct the water close to but not causing any potential ingress to the bearings. Thus, just don't be stupid with the spray. You'll be fine. If you have a grand of Ceramic Speed bearings, you shouldn't be washing your bike yourself anyways....