Help! I need advice quick! I just disassembled my stingray hub and the cones are perfectly smooth and even ball track. But it seems like there is an extremely small shallow dent on one of the cones. I ran a screwdriver tip on it and it doesn’t catch it just rolls over the tiny dent and I don’t feel anything. Hub cups are good too. Can I just put new bearings and regrease? I have seen worse imperfections that people use with no problem. I need fast replies!!!
AfraidOfTheSun on
Well, can you even get replacements for that? We could split hairs about bearing wear, but what is the use case for the bike? It probably won’t be ridden very hard or often at this point right? That’s my argument, the bike rolled around for 50 years on what it has now, it’s not going to suddenly blow up if you put it back together fresh, and a Stingray is like a collectible now right?
theguth on
All good, send em
ActuallyAHamster on
This looks like the kind of wear that might sound like a bit of grit when you spin the wheel by hand after reassembly. If you had caged ball bearings, you can sometimes pack in one additional ball bearing if you bed the cup with a lot of grease and push loose ball bearings into the grease one by one. Pack the bearing until full of balls, then remove one or two to give the balls room to roll. The net gain of one or two balls can help spread the load in the bearing and reduce the gritty feeling from the bearing as there is a higher chance of another ball in the right place to bear the load while not in the pitted spot.
This won’t cure the problem, obviously. But it might help you get more serviceable life out of it.
Any hardware store (not home big box store) will have the ball bearings you need; these will be standard fractional inch size ball bearings.
oldfrancis on
Those bearings are just starting to show wear. I would grab my can of trusty marine grade bearing grease, install them properly, and enjoy the ride.
5 Comments
Help! I need advice quick! I just disassembled my stingray hub and the cones are perfectly smooth and even ball track. But it seems like there is an extremely small shallow dent on one of the cones. I ran a screwdriver tip on it and it doesn’t catch it just rolls over the tiny dent and I don’t feel anything. Hub cups are good too. Can I just put new bearings and regrease? I have seen worse imperfections that people use with no problem. I need fast replies!!!
Well, can you even get replacements for that? We could split hairs about bearing wear, but what is the use case for the bike? It probably won’t be ridden very hard or often at this point right? That’s my argument, the bike rolled around for 50 years on what it has now, it’s not going to suddenly blow up if you put it back together fresh, and a Stingray is like a collectible now right?
All good, send em
This looks like the kind of wear that might sound like a bit of grit when you spin the wheel by hand after reassembly. If you had caged ball bearings, you can sometimes pack in one additional ball bearing if you bed the cup with a lot of grease and push loose ball bearings into the grease one by one. Pack the bearing until full of balls, then remove one or two to give the balls room to roll. The net gain of one or two balls can help spread the load in the bearing and reduce the gritty feeling from the bearing as there is a higher chance of another ball in the right place to bear the load while not in the pitted spot.
This won’t cure the problem, obviously. But it might help you get more serviceable life out of it.
Any hardware store (not home big box store) will have the ball bearings you need; these will be standard fractional inch size ball bearings.
Those bearings are just starting to show wear. I would grab my can of trusty marine grade bearing grease, install them properly, and enjoy the ride.