Rear bearing longevity?

[TheFungle]

My Fulcrum Racing 3's have approx 7-800 (mostly dry) miles on them and the one thing which impressed me about them was how free spinning they felt. After spinning the wheel on the stand I noticed a slight draggy sounding noise which I hadn't noticed before, slightly concerned I gave the wheel the usual side-to-side test and lo and behold there is noticable lateral play in the wheel. Off to the LBS it goes and I'm relegated to the winter bike for the bank holiday.

Should I expect the bearings and/or adjustment to last longer than six months/800 miles?

I'm anal enough at the best of times and with them being on my good bike I'm even more so; thankfully I've noticed in time before I've caused potentially worse damage.

[upsidedownmark]

Yes. May be that they're cup/cone variety and just need some adjustment after bedding in.

However, they should keep going pretty much for ever. Well, a long time. I get on far better with the cartridge bearing type.. No idea what the 3's use.

[neilski]

They should last a lot longer than that. I got over 30,000km out of my XT hub on the rear before some grit found its way past the seals and fecked the bearings & cone.

Front hub is a Schmidt dynamo which is good for 50,000km between services apparently. I'll let you know if that's true in about another 20,000km.

[Justin S]

Depends on what the bike shop find inside them ! Serviced 2 sets of cup and cone hubs on workmates bikes this week to find bearings looking like maltesers, where water had ingressed in there and killed them all. Both riders adamant they don't use hoses or pressure washers on their bikes when cleaning them. Its unusual for hubs to need adjusting, but if they do, its extremely easy to do. Shimano style hubs do come with the minimal amount of grease in them, so I always strip new hubs and fill with Phils grease, which is fantastic stuff. Very runny, less resistance and better water repellancy.

[outnumbered]

Fulcrum R3s have (tiny!) cup and cone bearings. The seals are quite good, so unless you've bee riding in really horrible conditions for all those miles, they probably just need adjusting. That is really easy by the way, you just need a small Allen key (3 or 2.5mm iirc) to slacken the clamp and spin the outer plate round a little more,

[47p2]

Good youtube video here on how to service them

Click

[uncinqsix]

My commuter has crappy Giant own-brand hubs that have rubbish sealing on them. I replaced the cones yesterday at 5200kms (14 months), but they were showing signs of pitting at less than 2000kms. It's not like I just neglected them either - they've been serviced 3 times in the past year.

Bloody hopeless. I suppose the solution would be to switch to some decent Shimano hubs, but that's a complete PITA.

[upsidedownmark]

I've given up on the cheapy shimano wheels too - the bike came with R500's, I replaced the rear, but on both occasions they've finished up grinding, and it's been the races that are pitted. Put a different hub in the front, but couldn't be a**ed with the rear, just rode my good wheels through the winter :/ Need to find something else..

[TheFungle]

upsidedownmark said:

I've given up on the cheapy shimano wheels too - the bike came with R500's, I replaced the rear, but on both occasions they've finished up grinding, and it's been the races that are pitted. Put a different hub in the front, but couldn't be a**ed with the rear, just rode my good wheels through the winter :/ Need to find something else..

I've R500's on my winter bike and I'd agree, the front hub has been fine but the rear hub is continually losing grease from the drive side; very frustrating.

A decent set of sealed cartridge wheels are next on the shopping list I think (for the winter bike).

[anonymous-user]

TheFungle said:

I've R500's on my winter bike and I'd agree, the front hub has been fine but the rear hub is continually losing grease from the drive side; very frustrating.

A decent set of sealed cartridge wheels are next on the shopping list I think (for the winter bike).

I have put my Fulcrum 5's through hell and they have never needed adjustment. They must be up to 10K km easy now and despite going out in all weathers/conditions this winter they are bullet proof. Not particularly fast by any means but a brilliant set of training wheels...not to mention cheap as chips. I had play on some Fulcrum Zero's but adjusted the cone and they have been fine ever since. Keep looking at some hand builts but I can't see the benefit at the mo?

[BGarside]

Some cup-cone bearing hubs can be drilled and a grease nipple inserted in the hub shell. OK, you need to fill the hub shell with grease before it gets to the bearings, but no more bearing stripping or prematurely knackered bearings.

Just make sure to remove the axle and bearings and flush the hub shell with WD40 or a similar solvent clean out any swarf after drilling.

Some hub shells are thin so drill an appropriately-sized hole and use the grease nipple to cut its own thread rather than using a thread tap to cut it.

Get a cheap grease gun and a large tub of car grease, pum it in until it emerges from the ends of the axle - job done!

[BGarside]

Plus, rotate the hub axle in the frame dropouts occasionally.

The cone surface invariably fails in fatigue (pitting / spallation) before the cup surface, which rotates, and so rotating the cone moves the position of maximum loading (the bottom of the cone, as mounted in the frame) and spreads the fatigue damage aorund the cone, prolonging its life.

[scubadude]

Funnily enough and all of a sudden (so sudden I stopped to see if they where broken) my Fulcrum Quattro rear started clicking on freewheel at the weekend- after a year of total silence in now makes a loud and sharp click, all still tight and true but went from silent to clicky overnight0- weird!