Originally Posted by loosemilk

If you are comfortable pulling the crank and bottom bracket yourself, my post here will hopefully help you out. I'd definitely check once you have the bottom bracket out if there is any play in that as well - it's possible that would contribute to some of the play you're feeling in the suspension since they're quite close.

The tools I needed to go through this whole process were:

- Crank puller

- socket wrench (for the crank bolts)

- bottom bracket tool (for your specific bottom bracket type)

- a big wrench for the bb tool

- set of metric allen wrenches (I think only 4, 5, & 6 mm were needed for this but I could be wrong)

- a bottom bracket pin spanner (you'll need this to take apart the suspension bearing. I used a couple of files but that's really not a good idea)

- forceps (for placing the bearings)


The consumables needed are:

- 118 5/32" loose ball bearings (you could use 56 if you keep the cages - I elected not to, which might extend the amount of time I need before going in there again)

- grease - whatever you use for headsets. I use boat trailer wheel bearing grease, you can get it at most hardware stores

- degreaser - something to clean off the old bearing surfaces and make sure they're not messed up

- rags/paper towel - more clean-up


It is a lot, but the process is pretty straightforward. the only place you could really go wrong is if you over-torque the big bearing assembly when putting it back together. To avoid this, you could just mark which notch in the inner ring initially has a bolt fir into it (see images 7166 & 7171 in my post). Doing it yourself may very well be the only option. I went to my favorite shop to buy bearings halfway through and they told me they'd had an iDrive for a while that nobody wanted to attempt to rebuild. When I came back in and told them I'd rebuilt mine in just a few hours the manager straight up offered me a job.


Best of luck with yours, and do report back.