Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Sealed Bearing Conversion pt. 1

So i you've never done one of these before, you have to first rip out the cup and cone set up out of the wheel. Mine came this way shipped to me. This leaves a space for a bearing. For my sealed bearing conversion I went to the local bearing shop and came back with a bearing that had an OD that fits snuggly in this space. The challenge was finding the right ID. They only make bearings in certain sizes. What I decided to do in the end was go for a 1/2 inch ID. WHAT!?! Not Metric! I know. The only thing that will be standard on my bike. I sold out, but I don't want to get some crazy weird metric size that I'd have to search and search for the nuts for. And since I can't use my original 11mm axle, I took it in a new direction. The plan is to do a bolt through style similar to the Kinetic setup (which I just recently realized has sealed bearings). One bolt that goes through and a nut to seal the other end (with the appropriate spacers of course).

The axle however was much bigger than the 11mm. So I had to make adjustments to the wheel hub as well as the forks.