You might be a competitive cyclist who obtains new equipment each year, an avid cyclist who keeps their equipment for many years or a bit of both; but either way you roll, you would probably benefit from having your balls checked out. The balls I am referring to are the ball bearings in your bicycle – mainly the hubs and bottom bracket; but also the pedal, rear derailleur pulleys and headset bearings. Bearings are one of those items that is not sexy and is rarely thought about since they are out of sight; but often instead of being filled with grease, they can filled with dirt, water or rust. This in turn will reduce the results and efficiency of each of your pedal strokes.
At the very least you should have the current bearings on your bicycles dissembled, cleaned and repacked with grease; but in recent years there has been quite a few advancements in bearing technology that you may want to take advantage of using. One of these advancements has been the introduction of Silicon Nitride ceramic bearings. Enduro Bearings from Oakland, California is a bearing manufacturer, that along with making steel and stainless steel bearings, also produces ceramic bearings. Their ceramic bearings are seven times harder than steel, 60 percent lighter and 5/1,000,000″ from exactly round in sphericity. What does this all mean? A faster rolling bike for the same effort that you are putting to the pedals.
While at Interbike this year, I had a chance to examine a bottom bracket that was ridden for many months by a professional BMX rider. I could not find a single pit in the races or anything visibly wrong with the bearings, but what it truly amazing is that it was ridden this way without any grease. They wanted it to fail, but the races and bearings were fine. So what is the downside of ceramic bearings? The cost, as ceramic bearings can cost ten times as much as low grade bearings.
Enduro Bearings is an industrial manufacturer that produces bearings and seals for heavy equipment along with ball bearings, bottom brackets, wheel kits, tools and even fork seals all in California. The pride themselves on producing the highest quality product which shows in all of the products they produce. If ceramic bearings are out of your reach, Enduro also has high grade steel and stainless steel bearings for the same applications. Their ceramic bearings are available in multiple grades and are offered as full ceramic (bearings and races) or loose balls if you are replacing the factory bearings in a Campagnolo or Shimano hub.