Mystery Hub

[newfsmith]

3/16 bearings, maybe even 10?

[Tuckervill]

Marbles? Bee-bees? Gumballs? birdshot?

Karen

[DebW]

Ten 1/4 inch bearings. They didn't fit in a single circle, so two were out of the plane they should have been in. Hence the wear over a wide part of the cone. And the odd behavior truing the wheel, as the location of the out-of-plane bearings could change. So I removed one bearing, put the hub back together, and trued the wheel easily.

My other adventures with the 1960s Raleigh Super Course included attempting to remove a cotter pin to adjust the bottom bracket. The shop had the 15 inch long VAR cotter pin tool like we had at my shop in the 70s (except ours was wooden and this was metal), but the only thing that did was start bending the threaded part of the cotter pin. So I decided to leave well enough alone and managed to adjust the bottom bracket with the arm and cotter pin on. Then I spent some time truing the steel crankset. The inside ring trued pretty easily by bending the arms, but the outside ring had all kinds of small-scale wobbles. The VAR chainring truing tool allowed me to improve it, but I didn't get it perfectly true. It has Simplex plastic derailleurs, and the cage on the front derailleur is quite narrow, hence the gears couldn't be adjusted well with an out-of-true chainring.

[Crankin]

Deb, are you working at a shop? Where????

[uforgot]

Deb, are you working at a shop? Where????

I was going to ask the same thing! I know you went to the Bicycle Institute...must have paid off?????

[mimitabby]

oh, was it missing some of it's ball bearings???!

[DebW]

It had one too many bearings on one side. Hence the very odd wear pattern on the cone. BTW, the customer was really impressed that I found the problem with his wheel.

I'm working at Frank's Spoke'n'Wheel in Sudbury. Love it. All the cool bike tools from the 70s can be found hiding somewhere in the shop. Today I needed to replace an axle and cones, and we had them. There are even 10-20 year old brand new bikes and frames sitting in the attic - Bianchis, Bridgestones. I've got my eye on the 52 cm Bridgestone MB-3 from 1994.