What’s the truth of mountain bike bearings?

In the mountain bike bearings time trial racing, in order to improve the performance, the driver even chooses to remove the sealing ring on the bearing to further reduce the friction of the mountain bike bearings and improve the lubrication. However, it is obvious that this is done more for the pursuit of marginal effects, which is not good for the durability of the mountain bike bearings. However, when everything is to win, pragmatism such as durability will not be considered at all. In fact they only care how much the player can lead the second hand in the game.

Racers will remove the sealing ring on the bearing to further reduce friction and increase their speed, but from the research results, it is not worth it.

Jason Smith, the founder of "Friction Facts" (a mechanism that specializes in transmission efficiency), conducted a test on mountain bike bearings on the bottom bracket three years ago and came to the following conclusions. First, although this part can bring benefits to the driver, it is very small. The difference between the best and worst bottom axle is only 1.35W. The second is lubricants, including solid grease and liquid lubricating oil, and the impact of the sealing ring on the bearing is greater than it is expected.

In the study, Smith tested three types of PF30 bearings, including Enduro Zero bearings, with a frictional power loss of 0.45W; CeramicSpeed's uncoated mountain bike bearings with a friction loss of 0.42W; and Gold Race's shaft with a friction loss of 0.29W . Then he used ultrasonic waves and grease solvents to thoroughly clean the lubricants in the bearings, and replaced them with seven different lubricants in turn, and studied the differences. The lubricants are: dry powder molybdenum dioxide, Avid Slip R/C bearing oil, three-in-one motor bearing oil, Phil Wood Tenacius lubricant, shimano apple sauce, finish line Extreme Fluoro grease and CeramicSpeed ​​TT grease.

Smith separately evaluated the performance level of each lubricant under different filling levels, and tested the performance of the bearings with and without seals in the test. All tests were carried out with each bearing bearing 52kg in the longitudinal direction. Smith said this is similar to the bearing load of a 79kg rider with a cadence of 95 and generating 250W of power.

Before the results came out, Smith's guess on the results was that friction is closely related to the viscosity of the lubricant, that is, dry lubricants have the lowest friction, followed by lubricating oil, and finally grease. However, the results are quite different from what he guessed, so for drivers and mechanics, some so-called "common sense" is sometimes unreliable.

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