I received a Racing 3 from a customer (sort of).
Not sure why they only left the 2WAY-FIT sticker on there.
Oh well.
The freewheel body has some play in it, apparently.
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When I grab the sprocket and wiggle it side to side,
the entire freewheel body has play.
This is usually caused by bearing wear or damage in the freewheel body, but
when I wiped the grease from the outer bearing,
the seal was missing.
The inner race was moving excessively in directions other than rotation relative to the outer race, so it came off.
When I tried to extract the bearing, only the inner race came off.
In cases like this, the balls typically escape from the outer race when the retainer breaks down, but that wasn't the situation here (more on that later).
Several bearing balls had fallen inside the freewheel body.
While this bearing is a standard size,
it has a single-side seal design, so if anything goes wrong,
ball loss tends to happen easily.
And beyond that, because it has a single-side seal rather than dual-side,
problems themselves seem more likely to develop.
Since the freewheel body was moving eccentrically,
there were scuff marks where it rubbed against the hub body.
The outer race of the outer bearing remained on the freewheel body side, but
if it's on the outside, recovery is easy.
If it's on the inside, it's basically impossible, and while I've ground out outer races with a rotary tool to recover them before, the standard solution is to replace the entire freewheel body. With Campagnolo Fulcrum freewheel bodies, the outer bearing tends to wear more easily, and during replacement it's usually either the outer bearing alone or both, with the outer-only repair being more common, while replacing just the inner is extremely rare. Furthermore, having the inner bearing's outer race remain so embedded in the freewheel body that the internals are damaged is an even rarer case.
In the image above, I've already removed the inner bearing too, but this time both the outer and inner bearings needed replacement.
While I was at it, I did a full hub overhaul too, and
installed the freewheel body and trued the wheel.
↑The outer bearing I removed
Just like with cartridge-bearing-style headsets,
when balls spill out all over the place,
it's usually due to retainer damage.
However, as you can see this time, the retainer showed no deformation.
Since the balls were just worn down abnormally,
it's hard to imagine other balls falling out of the retainer,
so this time there may have been a cracked ball.
Not sure why they only left the 2WAY-FIT sticker on there.
Oh well.
The freewheel body has some play in it, apparently.
←←←
→→→
When I grab the sprocket and wiggle it side to side,
the entire freewheel body has play.
This is usually caused by bearing wear or damage in the freewheel body, but
when I wiped the grease from the outer bearing,
the seal was missing.
The inner race was moving excessively in directions other than rotation relative to the outer race, so it came off.
When I tried to extract the bearing, only the inner race came off.
In cases like this, the balls typically escape from the outer race when the retainer breaks down, but that wasn't the situation here (more on that later).
Several bearing balls had fallen inside the freewheel body.
While this bearing is a standard size,
it has a single-side seal design, so if anything goes wrong,
ball loss tends to happen easily.
And beyond that, because it has a single-side seal rather than dual-side,
problems themselves seem more likely to develop.
Since the freewheel body was moving eccentrically,
there were scuff marks where it rubbed against the hub body.
The outer race of the outer bearing remained on the freewheel body side, but
if it's on the outside, recovery is easy.
If it's on the inside, it's basically impossible, and while I've ground out outer races with a rotary tool to recover them before, the standard solution is to replace the entire freewheel body. With Campagnolo Fulcrum freewheel bodies, the outer bearing tends to wear more easily, and during replacement it's usually either the outer bearing alone or both, with the outer-only repair being more common, while replacing just the inner is extremely rare. Furthermore, having the inner bearing's outer race remain so embedded in the freewheel body that the internals are damaged is an even rarer case.
In the image above, I've already removed the inner bearing too, but this time both the outer and inner bearings needed replacement.
While I was at it, I did a full hub overhaul too, and
installed the freewheel body and trued the wheel.
↑The outer bearing I removed
Just like with cartridge-bearing-style headsets,
when balls spill out all over the place,
it's usually due to retainer damage.
However, as you can see this time, the retainer showed no deformation.
Since the balls were just worn down abnormally,
it's hard to imagine other balls falling out of the retainer,
so this time there may have been a cracked ball.