Bearings . . . 'ball retainers' - does anyone know where to buy them?

[andrew_s]

New balls should always come from the same packet. Don't try to save money by buying 3 packs of 10 instead of one pack of 50 (or whatever).
The exact size doesn't matter so much as that they are all the same size. If you mix packets you could end up with a mix of big uns and little uns, which doesn't work very well.

Cages exist solely to make the bike quicker to assemble in the factory. Loose balls work better.

 

[accountantpete]

Cages exist solely to make the bike quicker to assemble in the factory. Loose balls work better.

I've just sold some early 80's Campag Record hubs with loose bearings and they were just a gnat's whisker less smooth than modern sealed bearing Mavic Ksyrium hubs.

 

[asterix]

Right, so looking at that diagram, it suggests that when a caged-bearing is used, there are a total of 11 bearings are there within the cage. Obviously they are evenly distributed as a result of that cage. What I'm trying to get my head around is if 11 loose bearings were put into that race, because there is no cage to hold them at equal distances, they could bunch up together, leaving a gap (and surely this would result in uneven loading/poor wear characteristics etc.).

The other way I'm looking at this, is for example in a non-caged bearing hub (one of which I dismantled yesterday), the bearings are all fairly snug to each other in the race with only a small gap left - this to me suggests that when the bearings are loose, the number of bearings should be sufficient to virtually fill the race?

Sorry if I'm being a bit dense . . . just struggling to get my head around this a bit.

Well the bearings have to touch something but it matters very little if it is the cage sides or the next bearing. However, if the pressure against the next bearing is tight (if you have too many) then it's like the three cogwheel effect - if three cogs mesh none of them can turn. Since bearings aren't cogwheels they can turn but with more difficulty and unnecessary extra wear occurring.

Unevene loading in a hub isn't a problem because the turning of the wheel evens things up. It's much more of a problem in a headset where the action is only a semi-rotation and the balls tend to create their own pits (brinelling).

 

[bobg]

Call me anal if you like but I was taught by an old marine engineer that it is very wise to mic up your bearings before fitting ( even within the same packet ), because the variations in size can be surprisingly great and resulting wear consequently increases significantly. He was very picky and scared me to death but I've never forgotten much of what he insisted upon...