I’ve got some bearing slop going on. Measured at the tire, 14" from the axle, there’s about 1/8" total side to side play. There’s about 10 months of riding 50km/wk on the bearings (40mm 6203). Is this normal? acceptable?
I noticed the bearing slop while investigating a creaking noise coming from the profile hub ;-( Has anyone come up with a way to stop this aggravating noise? Has anyone tried epoxying the hub to the axle? Roll pins?
Thanks folks.
Cheers, Greg
check to make sure that the crankbolts are super tight and that you have enough spacers in use (maybe the bolt is bottoming out)or maybe a spacer got broken or squooshed.i guess your bearings could be shot though.
as for creaking,it seems to come and go for me.greasing the splines will mute it for awile.if its really LOUD i would recommend an overhaul.
This topic has been well addressed before; some dude from Washington is about to start prosthelatizing about Lock Tight ;)… which may work. Lewis’s Profiles creak bad; Tommy took off his cranks, smothered everything in lube/rust proventing gunk, and pressed 'em back on. No real improvement over time. Mine only started creaking after dropping it in a lake. Now, if I don’t wana hear it, I just ride with Lewis- his is loud enough that I can’t hear mine over his. He’s got a flick on his site documenting the sound with a chace cam…
Anyway,HERE is a link to some discource on the mater.
-Christopher
The play I’ve noticed is definately in the bearings. I’ve dissassembled the uni and the bearing slop is detectable. Not much but over 14"…
As for the hub, perhaps I’ve misunderstood all those previous posts. I reread them and they seem to refer to the crank/axle juction. Listening to mine as best I could without running myself over 
I thought the noise was more axle/hub related. Everything remains as tight as it was when I assembled it so who knows. Guess I’ll strip it down completely and fix ‘everything’ Ya right…
Greg
I’ve built an axle/hub with Profile compatable splines and am using Profile crank arms with it. However, my hub is different than the Profile since the spoke flanges are welded directly to the axle shaft rather than an aluminum hub affixed to the axle. I cut the splines too deep on one end so the crank is slightly loose and has been from the beginning. Even with a loose fit on one end I’ve NEVER heard any noise at all coming from the hub on my set-up.
This leads me to think that the “famous Profile creak” comes from the hub/axle interface and not the axle/crank interface. Since I’ve never actually seen a Profile unicycle hub I don’t know what holds the aluminum hub to the axle but I assume the axle and hub are keyed with the hub pressed on the axle.
Jagur wrote:
I think Jagur’s advice is critical on Profile stuff. The end of the axle must be set in slightly from where the splines end in the cranks. Otherwise the fixing bolts will bottom out on the end of the axle and not hold everything together tight enough. I’ll guess that the “Profile creak” goes away for awhile after tightening the fixing bolts but comes back after things loosed up a bit. This also might explain why some seem to creak more than others. It wouldn’t take much slop between the axle and hub to make a bunch of racket.
Steve Howard
My creaking is in recession right now. Sometime last Spring, I started to notice it, then at UNICON, it was unbearably loud. Now I don’t hear a peep from the center of the wheel.
Interesting.
Bruce
Sorry to change the topic slightly, but is this an on-going problem with profile hub and cranksets? I’m a bit worried because I’m about to get the profile setup. Even if this noise is annoying, does it do any damage (not the noise but the thing that’s causing the noise)?
Thanks,
Andrew
It is a common problem with profile hubs, but as far as I know, nobody can find any damage that is done by it, other than the annoying noise. The other thing is that I’ve never seen a profile hub with 145 cranks (like your trials uni will have) that creaks. I have a MUni with 170 cranks, and it creaks if I don’t grease it regularly, but the cranks on my trials have never made any noise at all. This is probably a combination of the reduced force you get on the hub with shorter cranks, and the fact that MUnis tend to me ridden in much more demanding circumstances (mud, rain, snow etc) than trials unis.
Ben
That may well explane Lewis’s slightly loose cranks, which are pressed on a bit far. I’ll see what we can do about adding a spacer. Man, I don’t look forward to getting those cranks off…
Thanks for the info- I’ll let you know if it makes a difference…
-Christopher
I dont see why not? it’s really easy.
not allways.i just o-hauled mine (my new ones) for the first time and one side came off easy and the other side?MAN! i had to stick a wooden dowl though the spokes and beat the livin crap out of the thing to get it off.good news is that the 1st time is the hardest and it sould get easier from here
Andrew,order that thing allready.it would have almost been there by now.
That’s why you use a bearing puller… makes it a lot easier.
i dont have a bearing puller
We had a hard time getting a bearing puller to fit (the angled jaws, the cause). Do you reshape the jaw to fit?
-Christopher
The Evercraft puller listed in the tool section of unicycle.com works great. You can also get it at Napa auto parts stores for about 26 or 27 dollars
I had an interesting experience with my profile setup recently. I was changing my tire and figured I would trying taking the cranks off for the first time. I had wanted to do this for more than a year, hoping some grease might reduce the creaking, but never got around to it.
I was using a bearing puller provided by unicycle.com. The damn thing seemed pretty tight. I ratcheted it up pretty tight, went in the other room to do something, and heard a really loud PING, then the sound of little ball bearings flying all over the place.
Now I had NO bearing, a stuck crank, and an unrideable Muni. Also, at this point there was not much material to attach a bearing puller to!!
Scott Bridgeman advised me to grind the remaining inner bearing off. I did this, which took about 3 hours. Still no luck. Went to the auto parts store and bought a $34 heavy duty bearing puller. This beauty was strong - chewed right through the washers and even made a dent in the profile cranks, but still the damn crank wouldn’t budge.
Took the Muni to Scott Bridgeman’s shop - he had to heat the crank with an oxy acetylene torch. Finally the little monster came off.
I’ve read so many times about profile crank maintenance, but I’m am NEVER trying to take this crank off again unless I have to. This thing was damn tight - from the sound of it - much more so than usual. Made me wonder if John Drummond had used loctite when he assembled the Muni, but I think there was more than loctite at play here - when I put the crank back on, I had to hammer it about 40 times to get it back on. Even with fresh grease, the creaking came right back.
You know the old saying, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix. Never more true.
Joe
that was a fantastic story merrill,little monster is the perfect term for my right side crank.i also had to hammer the crap out of it when going back on.weird though that the left side was like butta,with no ploblems…
Well no, what you do is just pull the bearing off and the crank comes off too.
…or you can get one out of your neighbor’s garage when he’s not looking, like I do.
The first time I took the cranks off my muni one of them was REALLY hard to take off. I ended up having to bang on it with a heavy hammer with the crank held in a bench vise. What a son of a bitch. After being used more, that crank is now much easier to take off. I still need a bearing puller to take off that crank, but it is much easier now. The other crank comes off easy.
If you are using the Evercraft bearing puller put the arms on the skinny side. The picture on unicycle.com shows the arms on the fat side of the block, put them on the skinny side. Grab on to the bluge of the crank over the axle. Don’t grab on to the bearing.