Head bearing toughness

[sloe]

Have recently been enjoying haring down rough stuff on the ATour as fast as shaken bones will allow, occasionally faster, courtesy of the Forestry Commission in Scotland, rigid fork, fattest tyres, softest pressures, Rhyno rims, bum in the air, blurred vision.

Are the head bearings going to be pulverised to dust by this?
Should I take a spare set for the extended tour?
What about the front hub bearings (Deore)?

The bike as a whole just seems to lap it up, very surefooted, but it encourages abuse. How much can it take?

[jawj]

Worry not, Sloe (though it sounds pretty fast to me).

Your bearings are made of extremely hard steel (& let us not forget that steel is indeed real) and are very much at home with compression loads.

They will only die by one of three methods:

1) Loose bearings - make sure your headset & hub (& any other bearings you might have...) are preloaded correctly. That is, they are tightened enough so that spin freely with no rocking, rolling or knocking at all.
2) Dry bearings - bearings like grease, grease is good. You can never have too much grease.
3) Dirty bearings - occasionally bearing-containing assemblies need to be taken apart. Any muck and water that has found its way in and made things black/brown needs to be cleaned away. Then grease 'em up. Grease 'em up good.

Yeah, bearings can be finickity and fickle but it's worth it.

Or get sealed bearings - when they die, just get new sealed bearings.

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You can never have too much grease.

[sloe]

Thanks for that, Jawj, I am reassured.