mrund3rd09

I know that the back wheel doesn't have ball retainers, right? that's why the balls roll around and you can hear that constant clicking noise?

but the front wheel has these bearings that sort of hold the balls in place. Well I took my front wheel apart today out of curiosity, and discovered that it doesn't have ball retainers. Is this normal? I have a 1984 fuji del rey that I got from craigslist.

IanHelgesen

The clicking noise comes from the pawls (the mechanisms that allow you to coast), not the bearings. The bearing retainers are there to speed assembly at the factory, and serve no functional purpose once installed. Your front wheel might never have had them, or (probably more likely) the caged bearings were replaced with loose ones by a previous mechanic. Removing the retainer makes room for one or two more balls, which reduces wear slightly.

sooprvylyn

Haha, have fun putting that back together. You sound like you haven't done much mechanics and you've just embarked on a reasonably tricky reassembly. Luckily you are on the right site to get help if you need it. You really should have some cone wrenches to put it back together properly, but if you are slick you can do it with crescent wrenches. Hope you paid attention when you were taking it apart. While you are in there you might as well clean everything out and re-grease it before putting it back together. Consider yourself lucky to have a chance to do this maintenance, most hubs these days have cartridge bearings so you don't run into this much anymore. Auto grease works well as a lubricant. Good luck.

mrund3rd09

um. I already put it back together. It wasn't that hard. didn't need any wrenches either, other than to tighten the cones and the outer nuts. All I had to do was to stick in the axle and drop the balls in, shake it around a little bit to make them line up in a circle, and do the same with the other side. I'm pretty sure I didn't screw it up, because the wheel is turning very nicely, I'm about to take it out for a spin to be sure... And yea, I just used regular chain lube to grease up the inside. I hope I didn't get any dust in there...

sooprvylyn

Impressive, you must be mechanically inclined, not too many can do this without being shown how. Well enjoy the old Del Rey, those older frames have a lot of personality and are fun to ride, and fun to wrench on.

mrund3rd09

oh.. well, I am an engineering major

Bezalel

Wheels normally don't have retainers, using retainers reduces the number of balls and are generally used in wider bearings.

sooprvylyn

Well Ian has it right, the retainers were used to make assembly at the factory easier and was used on most bike until sealed bearings replaced them as the new standard. Some cheapo Wallyworld bikes probably even still use em. Some of the better bikes had hubs assembled by hand and didn't have retainers, or many people who service hubs replace the retainer bearings with loose bearings. Chances are you got a wheel that was serviced by someone who did it right.

IanHelgesen

Chain lube will leak out too quickly. You could use it (some bikes did use regular oil for the wheels), but you'd need to top it off weekly (if not more often). I'd recommend picking up a tube of marine grease. It's fairly water resistant, can be found at any auto store, and a few dollars will get you enough to last for years.

Also, the cones adjustment needs to be quite precise. If you have wheels that are held on by nuts, you want to adjust the cones _just_ tight enough to eliminate any play in the axle. If you feel the bearings when you spin the axle, it's too tight. If your wheels are quick-release, you'll need to have the cones slightly looser, because the skewer will compress the axle when it closes.

oldster

+1on the no chain lube,Phil wood grease is best ,and made for bikes as well..
Bud

fietsbob

I suspect you are hearing the freewheel mechanism
when you are coasting, not pedaling


front wheel may be a substitute, normally both hubs are of same type,
loose ball stick in the grease well enough to get the axle together.

Using a retainer is a factory efficiency, just faster to assemble the parts.

JanMM

I can't imagine how you can get the (loose) ball bearings to stay in place for assembly if you used chain lube instead of grease.
Or how chain lube would work in a hub for more than a brief period of time.

LesterOfPuppets

Some hubs are set up with seals that are "built in" to the cone. One of these would be easy to reassemble with oil.

+1 on the longevity of oil. I'd imagine one rain ride could quite possibly rid the hub entirely of lube. I've heard of old school road racers running with oil and I think they replenished after every stage, 100-200 miles.

I've only seen caged hub bearings on lower end bikes. Caged headset bearings were common at all levels.

JanMM

I had a set of hubs in the past that had oil ports. I was never tempted to try oil instead of grease.

LesterOfPuppets

Same here. I still have Campy Record hubs. The clips that cover the oil ports have never been removed since they've been in my possession (since ca. 2000)

DMF 

That's not entirely true. A retainer keeps the balls separated and evenly spaced. In a perfect world where the balls are exactly the same size, the retainer effectively does nothing, as you say. But where there's any size mismatch, the balls can bunch and grind against each other.


Also, to the OP, never "add" a ball to an existing set of balls, e.g. pop the balls out of a retainer and add another to fill up the race. Ball size can vary between batches.

BCRider

I seriously doubt that wheel bearings have ever used retainers. You only generally see retainers on bigger bearings that use smaller balls such as headsets and bottom brackets.

I'm surprised at those that were surprised that the OP was able to successfully put the hubs back together. Come on guys, this is just about as basic as it gets!.

To mrund, you'll likely need to get in there fairly soon and add grease to the bearings because chain lube is often quite thin and will wash away soon. The common way to do this is to smear a thick coat of grease into the wheel hub cup and "glue" the bearing balls into place with it until you can slide in the axle with the one cone on it. The cone being slathered up with some grease as well. Flip the wheel over and drop the balls into the smear of grease in the other cup and poke at them a little then screw down the other cup. You certainly don't need or want to totally fill the hub but you want a fairly thick coating at the cup and cone for the balls along with a thin coating on the rest as a rust prevention step.

You'll find that the rear is the same but it uses bigger balls in the bearings. To get into the bearings you'll may find that you need to remove the freewheel first. I've seen some where you have to and some where the axle slips out of the freewheel without needing to remove it. It just depends on the freewheel and what spacer diameters were used on the axle. Freewheel removal can be some fun so look it up on the Park Tools help site www.parktool.com/repair . In fact that site is like an online help manual for anyone working on their own bike. Check it out and use it frequently.

As for the grease any old stuff will do. But a lot of us like the water resistant boat trailer wheel bearing grease. It's a green color that looks just like the Park Tools grease but it's about a third the price. I've used it a lot on my bikes and commuted in a LOT of rain. It never let me down and the bearings at the rebuild times always looked good with little or no signs of rust in the grease at the end of the year or more.

wrk101

Engineering student and chain lube on bearings.

Bearings need grease.

+1 The boat trailer grease is excellent.

+1 Need cone wrenches (they are cheap) to do an accurate and quality job.

Every 1980s Fuji I have owned (I've had a couple of dozen of them, including a 1984 Del Rey) had loose ball bearings in both wheels.

LesterOfPuppets

Why do you doubt? Go to your nearest Walmart. Start tearing apart hubs. You'll find caged bearings in no time.

Or you could zoom in on this pic if you'd like to avoid store security guard hassles:

BCRider

Fair enough. I never went so low as that....

rydabent

When assembling wheel bearings without the cage, a good heavy grease will easily keep the balls in place. In fact I try to use an extreeme pressure short fiber grease. Yes yes I know some of the extreeme roadies will claim heavier grease will slow them up. But in the real world I doubt if even Armstrong could tell what kind of grease was in the bearings on his bike.

mrund3rd09

is motor oil too thin for this job? I went to walmart, and I couldn't find anything labeled "grease" so I just grabbed some motor oil.

if I use motor oil, how often should I reapply?

Nerull

Every day.

If you couldn't find grease at walmart, you didn't look very hard.

BCRider

You fail at shopping then. And you obviously fail at asking for directions too. Grease is almost as common as oil at any automotive supply outlet. You would only have had to ask in case it was the next aisle over.

And no, motor oil is not suitable in any way for wheel bearings... unless you plan on taking the hub apart once a week.

No offense or sarcasm intended beyond the failing at shopping bit but I'm glad you're learning to do your own bicycle work. It'll extend your education and knowledge to learn what the difference is between oil and grease along with learning a bunch of other basics related to how stuff works on your bike. It'll make your future work as a certified engineer in whatever discipline be that much more in touch with reality.

dabac

I don't think I've ever managed to get the cones & locknuts to engage properly with "regular" tools. I've managed a few at a pinch using a stamped out "disposable" wrench sent along to be used in the assembly of something or another(like the IKEA Allen keys). Are you sure you've got the assembly figured out right? Or were you lucky enough to have a sufficiently slim wrench available?