BB Bearing Removal (Trek Madone 6.9)
Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2012 8:50 am
Have switched over from bb30 (Cannondale and BMC) to Trek. Diggin' my new 6.9SSL but, alas, my pretty Enduro bb30 bottom bracket tools won't work on Trek's smaller bb bearings. I've got several presses that will work to press bearings in, but what's the best way to safely remove the bb bearings? Not interested in buying the Enduro-specific tool as I may only have this bike for a season.
Can I carefully punch the bearings out with a dowel by moving around in a circle from the other side of the shell? I know the bearings will likely be toast after that due to the uneven load/force (another great thing about the Enduro tools), but that's fine. My only concern is damaging/deforming the carbon bearing surface in the bb shell. Don't need a wrecked frame...
Thanks, all.
Oh, bonus points for this one. The bearings that came with Madone are ceramic. Are these decent? I ask b/c the ceramic bb bearings that came with my Super6's were always lousy and failed very quickly. I always replaced them with high quality standard bearings that lasted forever. Not a big fan of ceramic bearings for the bb.
Can I carefully punch the bearings out with a dowel by moving around in a circle from the other side of the shell? I know the bearings will likely be toast after that due to the uneven load/force (another great thing about the Enduro tools), but that's fine. My only concern is damaging/deforming the carbon bearing surface in the bb shell. Don't need a wrecked frame...
Thanks, all.
Oh, bonus points for this one. The bearings that came with Madone are ceramic. Are these decent? I ask b/c the ceramic bb bearings that came with my Super6's were always lousy and failed very quickly. I always replaced them with high quality standard bearings that lasted forever. Not a big fan of ceramic bearings for the bb.