UniGeezer

Had a total bearing slip while riding my schlumpf G26er geared unicycle in high gear this morning at Whiting Ranch, causing a rather long, unintentional coast! As I was coming down a hill I applied some back pressure, and that's when it happened. Caught me by complete surprise but I somehow I managed to stay on for the coast, then had a surprisingly controlled dismount.This kind of slip in high often results in a hard fall to your backside!

I had my frame bead-blasted last week, which also removed the powder coating from the inside of my bearing caps. This had kept the caps and the frame from contacting, so you could properly tighten the caps onto the knurled bearing. When shifted to high, this special bearing locks in place, and turns the hub at 1:1.5, instead of spinning freely on the axle.

Unknown to me until this happened, without that layer of paint, I was not able to tighten the caps enough to keep the [knurled] bearing from slipping during back pressuring. The caps were tightening against the frame instead, allowing movement of the bearing. Pretty scary when this happens because it's so sudden and unexpected. So now I will put some shims in there to take up the empty space!