Originally Posted by
veganbikes
Quite possibly. I mean with good maintenance a cup and cone will be great for a long time and but on both you can replace bearings easily enough (though maybe on sealed stuff more easily due to not having to deal with individual bearing balls?) Me personally I don't want to have to adjust hubs or regrease bearings though maybe if I had the money and space for a good solid home shop as well as a ton more experience wrenching it and also maybe fewer bikes (which wouldn't happen) I could see it being more possible.
I did it in my kitchen on my back wheel in about 10 minutes flat last night. Not that big of a deal.
Thing about 1/4" ball bearings? You can get them (or a close enough metric equivalent) almost anywhere in the world, regardless of bike shop availability. Pop down to any hardware store or industrial supply or machine shop, they'll have something that'll work.