I’m going to have to take it to a cycle shop, but here’s the problem with my 24" Schwinn. The right side of the frame has slipped off whatever the little greasy round brown thing is that holds it in place and is now loose and rubbing against the spokes; it looks like there is a little bit of a greasy brown circular thingy between the frame and the spokes, too. It happened about 1/2 mile from home and it was a sad and lonely walk back. My pride is intact as there were no witnesses to my mechano-induced UPD.
I am, however, at the moment without a donut and without a unicycle that will go any sort of distance.
I have never taken a Schwinn frame off the bearings, so I don’t hae direct experience with them. But Schwinn does use special bearings with a groove in them and a circlip to keep the frame from slipping off the bearing. It sounds like one of your circlips fell off.
I don’t know if it’s a standard circlip size that you’ll be able to buy locally. If you can’t find the circlip locally then unicycle.com has them.
Despite my deliberately non-technical language, John, you’ve confirmed what I thought might be the problem. I could buy them from unicycle.com, but since I wouldn’t really know what to do with them once in my possession, I think I’ll just drive down to the authorized Schwinn dealer where I bought the machine in the first place and let them fix it. You have, though, saved me a trip to my local LBS since, not being a Schwinn dealer, they would very likely not be in a position to deal with this problem expeditiously. Thanks.
In the meantime, there is a good chance I’ll be picking up my 29" unicycle on Sunday which will mean the 24" Schwinn will be used for my attempts at light MUni only, anyway.
This week is shot, however. Time to break out the neglected household paperwork.
The week is likely not shot as far as unicycling goes. In reading your problem description again it sounds like the missing circlip is dangling on the hub between the frame and the spokes. The bike shop should be able to put the dangling circlip back on the bearing and you’ll be good to go with minimal down time.
If the clip just came off the groove in the bearing then you probably already have the parts you need. You just need to put them back where they belong. If you pull the pedal and remove the outer circlip the frame blade should slide off the bearing. The bearing may stay on the axle or may slide off but either way you need to get the wayward circlip back into its groove.
Of course this is made way easier with the proper tool, which I never seem to have, so I make due with screw drivers and pointy things, like my head.
I got a cheap used Blue 24 last year as I was desparate a starter Muni, even if it was a POSchwinn. The wheel wobbled all over inside the frame. Upon closer inspection I found it had two problems. The fork blade was bent and the bearings were slipping all over the axle because someone had liberally greased or oiled the entire thing. I disassembled it, cleaned it up, applied some loc-tite to the bearing/axle interface, and cold forged the frame back into shape. Re-assembled everything and it ran fine until your problem occured. The inner circlip fell off and I hadn’t even messed with it during the overhaul! So now I have disassembled and reassembled it twice.
Its now getting a bit lonely with the new toys getting all the attention.
I see JC has already covered this now but I’m not throwng away this post!..Groovy.
just go out into the street and grab two hypodermic needles,then stick the points in the holes on the circlip and spread it around the bearing,then slip it into the groove.
Pictures (as I have mentioned before) eliminate most guess work. Pictures of the donuts won’t help, however. If you had a nice shot of the bearing area I would wager that 10 Schwinn owners would identify your problem and recommend the correct solution.
Raphael-
Is your local LBS the same as your local LBS bike shop?
