Originally Posted by
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.
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.
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/t...es-yours-last/
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.