Rusty Bearings Fix

[RyanV]

So a couple of weeks ago we had snowstorm that dumped about a foot of snow on the ground. Its been sunny ever since then and the snow is melting away, making for a lot of water running down the streets I scooter to get to class. I was pretty good about not riding my scooter through anything biggeer then a 1/2 inch puddle of water, but apperently that wasn't good enough. One day my bearings were spinning fine and the next the front wheel wouldnt even turn. It just stopped.

I took out the bearings in the front wheel and sure enough, there was evidence of rust around the outside of it. Both these bearings WOULD NOT SPIN. So I took both the front and back wheel bearings off(the back bearings spun fine) and soaked them in 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol overnight. The next day I took them out and to my pleasent surprise, one of the frozen bearings was spinning again. So I dried off the three that were able to spin and poured out the dirty alcohol. The other front bearing would still not spin, even with finger pressure. So I put in some clean alcohol solution, put the bearing in the container, agitated it, and took it out. I tried to spin it and it started giving way. Suddenly, the bearing started to spin like normal! I was so stoked!! I re-lubed all of the bearings, thanked my roommate for letting me use his alcohol, and now I am going to test these guys out on the streets. I'll post the results.

And needless to say, I am going to be curtailing the use of my scooter untill the streets are DRY.

These are bones super swiss 6 btw.

 

[Michael Rankin]

not really worth a thread

 

[Tom Cirbee]

^^^agreed

 

[JoshToy]

The cleaning/re-lubing is pretty self explanitory. But honestly, once a bearing rusts, it will never roll as smooth as they did straight out of the package. I'd just buy a new set and you ALWAYS avoid water at all cost.

 

[Jamie N]

theyre bones super swiss 6 so i dont think he will want to be buying ne ones a lot as they are pretty expensive.

 

[kelly russell]

not really worth a thread

disagree

 

[DevonIs1337]

yeah for real... for people with expensive bearings, this thread is worth looking at. thanks for the info! i'll try this with my swiss ceramics if i ever run into this problem :]

 

[JoshToy]

theyre bones super swiss 6 so i dont think he will want to be buying ne ones a lot as they are pretty expensive.

Well then I guess he shouldn't be taking his "expensive" bearings through water. It's common sense. Either he is making a stupid decision of thinking the bearings will be okay, or he takes his parts for granted. He's stoked to have them working again, but he realizes why they got messed up in the first place. The whole situation could have been avoided by simply taking the precaution. Like I said, common sense. Bearings + water = R bAd.

 

[RyanV]

Well then I guess he shouldn't be taking his "expensive" bearings through water. It's common sense. Either he is making a stupid decision of thinking the bearings will be okay, or he takes his parts for granted. He's stoked to have them working again, but he realizes why they got messed up in the first place. The whole situation could have been avoided by simply taking the precaution. Like I said, common sense. Bearings + water = R bAd.

What had happened was I had overestimated the ammount of water which would cause problems. As a matter of practice before this I would not ride my scooter when there was rain or sprinklers. What surprised me about this occurance was that the little ammount of water I rode over (through isnt a good word as there was really no depth to that water) would cause such a catastrophic failure. It never happened with other bearings under similer or worse conditions. Come to think of it, it could have been an error in the lubrication process (not taking out rubber shields before applying lube) or the axle on my front fork wasnt tight enough, allowing water to get into the bearings.

In any case, the problem is fixed and to be honest I havnt noticed any degredation in the smoothness of my bearings. Speed is the same, if not better then before. As to why I made this thread, there are so many threads out there with "XXX happened to my scooter, how do I fix it?" I thought it would be proactive to share this piece of info and save other riders a lot of money and downtime.