Review: PRO Atherton signature Grips...

This review starts all the way back in my BMX days... I grew accustom to having alot of room to move my hands around when things got hairy, or try and land your hands perfect every time during a bar spin- Long Grips Rule. I went thru the Grip-Shift 90's and hated the short bar/small grip deal- to which I tried to use full size grips. Not the best when things came up fast but then grip-shift weren't good for that anyway. So now we are in the time of 'Lock-Ons'. I love the easy on/easy off way about them and no more hairspray losing the battle when things turn wet. But my main compliant is that my hand rides on the outside so much that the heel of my palm is sore after a ride from hanging on to the outer lock-ring. Not many alternatives out there till I found the new Atherton grips by PRO (Shimano):

First off let me say I do NOT like the day-glo colour lock-rings that these come with- I gave the grip tabs a trim to fit the lock-rings from my old grips and now I am happy. Other then that these grips kick-ass! The inner plastic sleeve is way softer then ODI's and the outer grip area is super-duper soft. This added up to less hand fatigue and more control. I can really imagine the idea for these on the World Cup scene- just like way soft durometer tires for wet muddy conditions. In that sense these may not last as long as other grips- but for racing who cares? I would rather have something comfortable and have to replace it like a worn out tire.

Here's the deal- the inside uses a standard lock on ring for outside handlebar contact and the outside end uses an expanding elastomer to wedge against the inside of the handlebar. This expander makes fitting a little more time consuming. Once all is said and done these feel great.

My hands are less tired and I have a ton of room to move around with. One other thing to note is to be careful of the washer that pushes on the elastomer- it can grab the inside of the bar and not do its job. It worked fine on my old aluminum bars but I just got some new carbon handlebars and I had to grind the washer down to get things to tighten up. Bar review to come soon...

Bearing Failure-

Yesterday out on a leisurely ride on my local trails, my rear hub bearings catastrophically failed. As I was heading towards the switch backs, my rear hub felt grabby. The whizzy sound had turned dull and then my chain jammed. I got off and had look- nothing visual but when I rocked the wheel it shimmied like a belly dancer at the cassette to hub junction. POOP I SAY! so back to the car. I had to pedal (at least it is all downhill) as the cassette felt like it wanted to grab and throw me to the ground.

Some background: I bought this fine Hadley SDH rear hub about four years ago. It was first built onto a Syncros DSP32 and tortured in Whistler on the skinnies and ladder drops with no complaint. Then as I started to race more, I rebuilt the wheels with Syncros DP25 rims. Mind you I never opened up the hub for service in all this time- don't ask me why. So after four years of abuse it finally let go.

OK- so I get home and tear it apart. The only thing gone bad was the drive side bearing:

arrow points to bearing sheared in half!

Nothing else was damaged fortunately and all I need to do is put some new bearings in. I was really worried that my cassette was blown. For awhile I had looked at getting ceramic bearings and swapping in the bolt on axle kit, now I have to save up and get all the parts. I will most likely just get the bearings and then take the whole thing to Hadley and have them do the work and get all new seals while I am at it. Guess I will be on the road bike for a-bit and do some more street/park riding....

check out how the bearing skid in the axle-

How To: Adding Grease Ports...

arrows pointing out grease ports

In an effort to minimize service time- Alot of the new frames out have grease ports for the bearings. This is great! Most of them seam to be on the lower portion of the swing arm by the bottom bracket where things get the most trail crap. I was up in Whistler a few years ago with my Intense 5.5, something felt sticky and it turned out my lower bearings where totally rusted and seized. No one in town had any bearings and I ended up just blasting them with cleaner and trying to get as much grease in as I could. Once I got home I found that this was a major complaint for alot of owners.

Most (all?) motocross swing arms have grease ports. Growing up everybody called them 'zerk fittings' and when I called around some shops, I got alot of 'Huhs?' 'Whos?' and 'Whats thats?'. So it just seamed that I should go to the source- Intense. Santa Cruz is using zerk fittings- these are the kind that are on all cars to grease the suspension arms. Turns out 'Zerk' became the generic term such as Kleenex.

A zerk consists of a nipple that the grease gun hangs onto and forces it's juice into, that then pushes the old grease out of the bearing. Really messy but way better than having to tear it all apart. Intense uses a flat type grease port that requires a special grease gun that you need to push down on to get the grease in. Fortunatly Pedro's makes one and I use their Bio-Grease.

these ports are tiny!

The next thing to get was the proper bearings. Stock Enduro bearings have covers on both sides of the bearings. They will not let the old grease to push out. The right bearings have a hard cover on one side only and allow the grease to push through.

I had found a few internet posts about people making the leap.

So- Yes, You have to drill holes in your frame AND figure out if there is any place that will need to be sealed up.

My frame has a huge gap area where the pivot shell and seat tube gather. I could fit my pinky around- so this is when I needed to come up with an idea of what to plug the hole with. Everyone seamed to be using some kind of two part glue and having a piece of something as a backing. This sounded stupid and runny- I came up with using two part auto metal like JB Weld. It is always by the auto parts store register if you now what I mean. So I went about making a batch and filling in the gap. After it hardened, I could file away the excess and make it nice and smooth.

you can still see the seat tube peaking thru

I then found the desired locations for the ports to go and thus drill points. Marked and drilled- the ports went in smooth with just a light tap from my dead weight hammer.

underside of BB/Pivot Shell

underside of lower swing arm shell

Now the fun part- I suppose I should have mentioned earlier- You must take your old bearings out first stupid. But you knew that! OK so I suck at replacing press fit bearings and ended up having a local shop use there über press kit. Fine and done. I decided to pre-grease the bearings before they went in just to make sure there was plenty going on to start.

Now it was time to put it all back together. It should be mentioned that I did this over winter. It took a REALLY long time to get the grease ports.

After two years of adding the ports, I can say this is how all frames should be set up. The grease turns into a nice barrier to the elements and my swing arm always feels smooth. The only complaint is that I have to remove the front bolt to my shock to get to the swing arm port- the new Intense frames have a redesigned lower link that allows easy excess to the ports. This is a minor issue and can be resolved by upgrading to a the new box link.

Now go kill your warranty!