Over the last few months my bicycle steering axle started freezing up, to the point where the first thing I did before getting on my bike in the morning was jerk the handlebars from side to side aggressively to loosen it up. It made atrocious guttural sounds and bangs when I did and navigating Oxford by bike was becoming more treacherous by the day as I swerved from left to right trying to wrestle my front wheel’s fork in the right direction. It was time to undertake some DIY…

I picked the worst possible time for my first attempt. I got back from hockey training at 9:30pm and with a sudden burst of momentum took everything apart. “Take it apart, de-rust and grease, put back together, job done” was my thinking. How wrong I was. A friend who works at a bike shop warned me there would be ‘ball bearings’ to contend with, but naively I dismissed this and cracked on. First, loosening the headset of the steering stem. Then contending with the handlebars that were now only precariously attached by the gear and brake cables. Next, carefully levering up the adjustment rings with a box cutter. Then the steering shaft was nearly free!

My elation was quickly subsided by confusion and mild panic. CLIP, PING, PLOP…. tens of tiny scattering noises as if it was raining pebbles. Those were the ball bearings… They were tiny and grubby and unfortunately, distributed all over my living room floor at 11pm on a school night. I collected them as best I could and pondered my options.

My flatmate returned and balked at the state of the kitchen-cum-workshop. “Do you need a hand?”, he laughed. Together we diligently cleaned and oiled the tiny balls. The ball cages were ruined, all the claws were missing from one side.

After vigorously discussing which way all the parts needed to be oriented on the stem, we reassembled the bike, managing to keep about half the balls in place. The result? Much worse. So much worse that after one trip to the stats building the next morning I decided the bicycle was a total death trap and that I couldn’t ride it. It turns out that cycling a bike with absolutely no give in its steering feels really odd. Like trying to cycle a plank with wheels.

I spent some time searching for all the parts I needed (and some I didn’t) at Halfords. Crucially, I ordered a new set of ball bearings, and, even more crucially, they were supplied with a tube of lithium grease. Not all lubricants are born equal. WD-40 and lithium grease exist on different spheres of oiliness.

I was feeling rather pessimistic about my bike repair at this point, nonetheless on the following sunny Sunday I enlisted my partner to help me fix my bike. We basically did exactly the same thing as before, but replaced the destroyed bearings for the new ones and smothered both sites with lithium grease. The consistency of which is much like hand cream. But more toxic. After putting everything back together it worked! A win for part standardization and low friction coefficients everywhere.

Here are some pictures of my bike in pieces:

And here is a picture of me cycling through Manchester, which would not have been possible were it not for the replaced ball bearings and lithium grease.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and if your handlebars ever sound crunchy you know what to do.