Atef Halaka: What You Need to Know About Bike Bearings

If a person like you or Atef Halaka wants to learn to do repairs and maintenance on a bike, it is not enough to just understand the basic procedures. You also need to gain knowledge about bike parts and how they interact with each other. Just like doctors begin with studying the entire human body and its different parts before they specialize in a certain area, you need to learn about bikes and their parts before you can do advanced maintenance and repairs. Obviously, a bike is not even remotely as complex as a human body, but it does have its own parts and systems.

There are three major forces that work against you when you ride your bike. These forces are air resistance, gravity, and friction. Ball bearings help you overcome the friction. They are a part of the bike that has changed very little over the last several centuries. First recorded uses of bearings go back thousands of years. Humans have been looking for ways to reduce friction between the moving and non-moving parts since the invention of the wheel. 

According to Atef Halaka, bearings are usually made of small hardened steel balls. Some of the more expensive bikes have bearings made of ceramic. Whenever a wheel rotates around the axle, the bearings work to minimize resistance and friction. You can find bearings in various parts of your bike including the pedals, wheel hubs, bottom bracket, and headset.  

Bearings are a product of ultra-precise engineering. They have smooth, rounded, and shiny surfaces. If bearings start looking dull or chipped, then you need to replace them. To perform well, bearings require a lot of lubrication. In many cases, bearings are sealed together with water-resistant grease that covers them completely. 

Atef Halaka adviced if you need to install new bearings, make sure that they are absolutely clean before you apply grease to them. Otherwise, grease can become contaminated, which may lead to bearings breaking over time. 

Bearings are kept in place because they are secured with a race. A proven race design that has been in use for over a century has a ring of bearings sitting in a cup and secured by a cone. The cone is usually tight enough so that the hub rotates smoothly, yet there’s no looseness on the sides. 

One of the advantages of modern bikes is the use of sealed bearing cartridges. They do not need to be adjusted or lubricated, which saves a lot of time and effort for cyclists like Atef Halaka.