I Coulda Been a Contenda

Several years ago, I needed to improvise a tool to work on some cartridge bearing hubs -- if you press on the inner race of the cartridge you will ruin it. I came up with a good idea and sent it in as a submission to a mechanic tip contest held by The Third Hand/Loose Screws (a mail-order bike part and tool biz). I never heard squat back -- I'm pretty sure they took my idea and made TENS of dollars with it, but I still like them anyway. Moreover, I still like my idea. Here it is:

While overhauling a cartridge bearing hubset, I realized that I didn’t have a tool for installing the new cartridges. Wanting to press the new cartridges in (rather than hammer them in), I needed a tool that would to guide along the hub’s axle while only contacting the outer race of the new cartridge (a la Specialized’s cartridge installation tool that looks like a cartridge with a protruding outer race). Lo and behold, the old cartridge slipped perfectly into the backside of a 1” headset locknut, making a unit that would satisfy both criteria. It worked like a dream as the axle locknuts drove the new bearings into the hub shell.


I then wondered what cartridges the other size locknuts might accommodate and made a table with the locknut inner diameters, various common cartridge bearings and their outer diameters, whether a certain locknut will accommodate the bearing. A little machining (of the locknut’s inner diameter) is usually required for a fit, but using an aluminum locknut makes that an easy task. This tool is cheap and will last a long time, so press on and roll smoothly!

OlyBikes Blog Intro

This blog was created by the folks at OlyBikes, a small, independent bike shop in Olympia, WA. We like talking about bikes as much as riding and working on them, and have a lot to share, so we created a blog. Hope you enjoy it. BTW, we would like to hear from other bike freaks out there and if you have some cool thoughts or ideas you'd like to share, send them to us and we'll post them.