Originally Posted by
FBinNY
Bicycles are vehicles designed and built for use outdoors. So just like cars and trucks they need to be able to shrug off rain. I've ridden in the rain routinely all my life, or at least for the last 50 years of it, and have never - repeat NEVER - done anything extra in the way of maintenance. With all that careful non-maintenance, I've never worn out a bearing (except headsets and one rear hub that had specific issues) including those on a bike with over 50k miles on it.
So, if someone says that rain will ruin or damage a bicycle, ask them to sell you an outdoor bicycle instead.
True - bicycles and their motorized cousins have always been intended for use in all kinds of weather. Modern sealed bearings are even more weather- and dirt-resistant than their predecessors.
I can remember replacing the wheel bearings on many cars I owned back in the day. Shop manuals told you how to hand-pack the new bearing with grease before you installed it, and put an extra bead around the outer aperture to repel water. Today, this ceremony is unknown to all but the owners of classic and antique cars.
I still own bikes built in the 1960s and '70s with loose ball bearings in their hubs, headsets, and BBs, as well as more recent bikes with combinations of sealed and unsealed bearings. One MTB (circa 2010) has loose bearings in the hubs protected with rubber dust shields - essentially the older technology but with a "raincoat."
When I salvaged the bike, I found that the rear hub not only contained water and rust, but the bearing races were also pitted. Time for a new hub when that happens. The bike may have once been at the bottom of a lake for all I know, but I think it was just stored outdoors for a while.
The sealed wheel bearings on modern cars require zero maintenance, and can last the life of the car (although I've had to replace one after about 70K miles). Same is true of sealed cartridge bearings on modern bikes.
The non-sealed bearings that still exist on bikes need periodic maintenance. Service intervals can be extended if we load the bearings with grease of the proper weight and add a bit around the gaps, especially if the bikes are ridden in wet or dusty conditions.
Unfortunately, I've bought a few new wheels lately that had only a thin smear of light-weight grease (looked suspiciously like Vaseline) in the bearing races. I wouldn't expect them to hold up well in bad weather if I hadn't re-packed them with automotive wheel-bearing grease.