I live in Darwin Australia, where the humidity is extreme during the Wet Season.
I purchased a Canyon Ultimate in July 23, I’ve maintained it myself for the last couple of months. It’s been stored in my under ground car park (covered but open air) and have been religious in cleaning it after rides. I’ve put about 3k KMs into it.
Recently the headset felt stiff, so I took it to my local mechanic for a major service (strip down service). He told me the headset and Bottom Bracket are shot, sounds like water ingress or humidity. So I’m replacing all of the bearings. Any advice for how to avoid this happening again? Is it normal to wear through these parts this quickly?
Do you get condensation on things inside the car park? If so you could be getting condensation inside the bike too. Not sure what you could do besides store it elsewhere.
I always park my nice bikes indoors - not even in the garage for my nicest bike. I haven’t had to replace a head set in (I can’t remember the last time) and I replaced one bottom bracket a few years ago but I had bought it used in the first place.
How much pressure are you cleaning with? Are you letting the bike dry (in the sun) after cleaning? Though if water gets into the frame, it’s probably not going to just evaporate out. The “sealed” bearings should be full of grease, so it seems like it would take a lot of condensation, but if it’s constantly there, who knows. It takes awhile for that to get washed away since it isn’t exposed to any direct water pressure.
I keep my bikes inside, too, i.e. in the conditioned space, because…Florida. I do as much of my own wrenching on my bike, too, though, because I’ve heard enough people’s stories of mechanic’s telling them parts are “shot” after only a few months of use. Guy I ride with, just last week, was telling me that he quit going to one shop in town because they tell him he needs a new cassette every time he goes in, and the last time it was 3 months old (and this guy doesn’t ride a whole lot).
Seth (Bike Hacks), I think, did a video in the last year, testing out using a pressure washer to clean a bike. I don’t remember the details of his experiment, but the end result was he doesn’t think it’s an issue with modern components, seals, and bearings.
I live in Houston, extreme humidity all year long, and have never had an issue. I have had bikes in the garage (no air conditioning) for many years and never had this happen. Something is off.
Are you on the coast? Corrosion rate is highly correlated to number of feet from the edge of the coast. Like 100 ft is a significant difference. It’s that bad.
And if you’re close (as in short walk), how you store your bike will make a big difference too.
One time I knew I wouldn’t ride for a while, so washed a bike and leaned it against a wall in my climate controlled basement for storage. When I wanted to ride it a month later, the NDS bottom bracket bearing had seized. I tore it down after replacement and there was a good bit of rust. I assume water ingress, somehow. This was a SRAM PF30 bearing cup and it looked well sealed. I use a misting attachment on my hose, not high pressure spray, and I had washed the bike many times before with no such problems
It is possible they were not properly installed with grease from the factory or by whoever assembled the bike. Unless you installed them there is no way of knowing.
Highly unlikely, like winning the lottery luck. Sealed bearings are fully assembled and greased at the bearing factory. They just get set/pushed into the frame at the bike factory. To have both headset and bottom bracket bearings not greased by the supplier(s) on two different models of bearing is not going to happen.
Lynskey suggested headset bearing install
“For the headset bearings, you will want to apply water proof grease on the interior of headtube cups where the bearings will sit.”
I wonder if canyon didn’t put enough grease in the first place which caused his issue.
Headset issue, modern bikes are designed for aero that means cartridge bearings press fitted ( although usually the bearing seats are so far out of tolerance this is a source of bearing failure in itself) to molded frame cups with little or no additional sealing.
Headset solution, buy a bike/frame that uses a traditional headset with press in cups and proper sealing like a Chris King or Cane Creek 110
Bottom bracket issue, modern bikes are designed for lightness and stiffness, that means oversized crank axles and cartridge bearings press fitted ( although usually the bearing seats are so far out of tolerance this is a source of bearing failure in itself) to molded frame cups with little or no additional sealing.
Bottom bracket solution, buy a bike/frame that uses a traditional threaded BSA BB so you can fit a proper sealed cartridge BB.
As someone else pointed out salt is a corrosion accelerator, if you live or ride near the coast, rinsing your bike after every ride is essential, storing your bike outside is a no-no. Use to live 500m from the coast and there was still enough salt in the air to cause a lot of corrosion problems. A kids swing set lasted 2 years before it was rusted though.
OP has a Carbon fibre bike, Lynskey make titanium frames. Installing a press fit aluminium or steel cup into a titanium frame without grease is recommended so that if you ever want to remove them you have a chance of getting them out. grease also provides lubrication to make installation easier and reduce the likelihood of galling when installing.
That all points to internal issues with the actual balls and races. That would not have anything necessarily to do with the external headset surfaces or frame cups.
This points to either insufficient lube from the bearing factory (since it is sealed and not loaded with grease by Canyon or anyone else), or the grease was displaced by some factor that allowed water and other contaminants to damage the bearing races and/or balls.
This is partly right but also wrong, at least with headsets in mind.
For starters, “Aero” has nothing to do with the bearing & frame cup design. Most modern bikes in this price bracket (including MTB, BMX, Trials and other non-aero road bikes) have “Integrated Headset” designs. The sealed cartridge bearing drops right into a matching cup within the frame. It literally sits in place as installed by hand with no need to press them in.
I skimmed this video but seems well done. This jumps to a section on Integrated Headsets that I expect is what the Canyon here is using.
Your solution is to tell someone to change the entire frame & fork too get a better headset? Priorities may differ between people, but that is about as backwards an order as I have ever seen.
Regardless, there are a range of bearing qualities available for Integrated Headsets just like other designs and it’s possible this one suffered from a poor quality bearing. In my many years of bike use and decade at the shop, I have never seen a IH bearing failure that was the frame as the root cause. It was damage caused by poor use and/or bike maintenance.
For reference, here is a CK Dropset for Integrated Headsets, and landing page for similar ones from CC (via drop down list).
This already has aluminum cups pressed in at the factory, so the end users just drops in the appropriate Integrated Headset bearing (with a bit of grease as mentioned) and install the fork.
You are describing an External Headset with both cups pressed in (which was common on older metal frames as you mention).
Here is an Integrated Headset by comparison, which is effectively what Lynsky does despite theirs being a semi-permanent install from the factory (that is not meant for user replacement), and more importantly what the OP has for their Canyon Ultimate above.
I didn’t say the bearing going bad was such small odds. I said the supplier failing to add grease to multiple bearings of multiple models was very very unlikely.
There’s a great many root causes for a bearing to fail and many of them wouldn’t be the fault of the bearing design and manufacturing. The bike / component design could be loading the bearing inappropriately, use cases beyond design intent, user abuse, environmental severity, etc.
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