Bush Triangle

Last night I decided to thoroughly investigate an annoying squeak that hadn't been cured by cleaning the seat rails/clamp, lubing the seat post or cleaning/replacing the bottom bracket.

After removing the Hollowtech 2 cranks (simplicity itself) I decided to swap out the bearings for a set of EnduroForkSeals which Rob has found so much smoother than the originals. I had a bash at this last week but the lock tight and almost 3 years of chemical bonding kept bearing and cup together. However this time I was armed with the fabstastic bearing press (now this IS a special tool) which made the job as convenient as a trail side repair. If anyone needs to replace their HTII bearings, give me a call ;-)

Interestingly the stop gap '08 HTII cup/bearings are sealed differently from my original '05's (on the right hand side). See that the bearing is no longer "sealed" and now the "top hat" has a step to help align the loose cover. I've not been impressed with the sealing of the early units so it'll be interesting to see how these open units fair.

Armed with a Torx I then set about the rear suspension pivots, which haven't been touched for over 2.5 years and over 3k miles - with the exception of the teeny rear Horst Links. Sure they've had a few squirts of lube every now and then but otherwise they've just got on with the job. During disassembly I found one of the bottom bracket fixings was a little loose and as this link gets put through the most torque, I'd guess this was the source of my annoyance. Dang these Turner pivots are a good design - after a simple clean they look as good as new. Drifting the shafts in/out showed the bushes were still plenty tight so they remained in-situ.

Whilst the suspension was on the bench I also popped the rear shock apart and gave it a quick clean/re-lube.

Everything was refitted without a hitch and I eager to give her a test ride to check everything is running ok before my next tweak arrives...