Passion for Restoration

In this disposable society, it's almost always cheaper and easier just to throw out something old rather than repair it especially given the difficulty of finding competent people to do restoration work.  My oldest and favorite bike, a vintage 1979 Schwinn Cruiser, was having problems and I dreaded the worst.  I could not adjust the rear wheel bearings properly no matter how tight I screwed down the cones.  After taking apart the rear hub, things were even worse than I thought - the bearing race had disintegrated, little parts were falling out, and the ball bearings were just kind of rolling around on the cast hub walls.  I took the wheel in to several shops and they all just shook their heads "it cant be replaced", "no way to get it out", "you cant get a replacement race, its part of the hub".  I was not about to give up on my favorite bike (I have five) that easily.  I ended up spending about 12hrs labor ($720) to fix this bike which is pretty stupid economically since you can buy a new cruiser from Walmart for $110 but this bike is a classic and now will last another 30 years!  Here's what I had to do:

	The first task was to remove the disintegrated race, I did this by using a dremel tool to grind away at one section of the ring so as to cut it.  As you can see, only the side walls of the bearing race remain but the curved portion which should support the ball bearings is completely missing.  In the upper right you can see where I used the dremel tool to grind away a slot so the race could be removed. Here is the race after I removed it, not a pretty sight.
	Here is the wheel hub after the race had been removed.  You can see that there has been some damage done from the ball bearings rolling on the cast body here without the bearing race to take the load and wear but the damage isnt too bad.
	Since no replacement bearing race was available I would have to make my own.  Using my lathe I turned a stainless steel race using the good race on the other side of the hub as a model.
	Here is the old disintegrated race and the new race side by side, hard to believe these are the same part!  The original one obviously got a workout in my 30 years of riding it, its a wonder the bike was rolling at all with that crumbling race!
	Because the hub body was uneven from the wear, I used aircraft grade epoxy (Hysol) to support the new race in the hub instead of just press fitting it in.  Here is the race installed in the hub with epoxy.
	Not that bad of a project but with all the stumbling blocks, it took me a total of 6 months of having the bike spread all over the shop before it was done.  Here is the my proud Schwinn, good for another 25 years:

back