Tom gave you a link to a thread that will tell you more than
you want to know about replacing bearings.
Replacement bearings are $6 each for your uni at
unicycle.com. 'Kovachi 40-mm Sealed Bearing'
(unicycle.comshopexd.aspOpen ↗) For a
unicycle that is used outdoors get the rubber sealed
bearings. For a freestyle unicycle that is used indoors get
the metal sealed bearings. The metal sealed bearings should
have less friction (and less rolling resistance), but the
metal seal is more prone to getting dented or damaged. Thus
the metal sealed bearings are not a good choice for a muni.
All unicycles come with sealed bearings (well, except for
the very first batch of Cokers) so you've got sealed
bearings on your muni. But sealed bearings don't seal
completely. If the bearings sealed completely they would
have so much friction that no one would want to use them on
a unicycle. The seal is just a simple barrier. Dirt and
water can easily work their way inside a sealed bearing.
I typically get about a years use out of a set of bearings
on my muni before I start to notice degraded bearing
performance. This is, of course, highly dependent on how
often I ride and how wet and dirty the conditions are. If
you ride in an area with a lot of fine sand you could get
less than a years use from a set of bearings. If you like to
ride through streams you could get less than a years use
from a set of bearings. If you ride in good conditions that
aren't overly dirty, dusty, sandy or wet, you could get many
years use from a set of bearings. It all depends.
If you aren't comfortable replacing the bearings yourself
you can have a local bike shop do it. But order the bearings
from unicycle.com rather than letting the bike shop order
them. It is very very unlikely that the bike shop will be
able to get bearings for less than $6 each and very likely
that they will be quite a bit more than $6 each. Bike shops
should be familiar with pressing bearings in to fancy
suspension MTB frames so they should be able to deal with
removing the old bearings from a unicycle hub and pressing
new bearings on the hub. But do request that they Loctite
the bearings on to the hub cause that is a step that they
likely would not do unless you ask them to.
--
john_childs - Guinness Mojo
john_childs (at) hotmail (dot) com
Gallery: '' (unicyclist.comjohn childsOpen ↗)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
john_childs's Profile: unicyclist.com449Open ↗
View this thread: unicyclist.com30476Open ↗
