Servicing the Wheels

I had thought initially that my new wheels were is such great condition (well they are by comparison to the wheels that came with my bike) that I would simply put them on the scooter as-is in order to get the machine up and running (and then overhaul them at a later date).  However on closer inspection a couple of bearings were shot and so i decided to replace them all.  All 5 bearings! 2 on the front wheel and 3 on the back (despite the fact that the spares manual only actually identifies 2 of them - it does illustrate 3)

As an aside here I was surprised / appalled to see that someone somewhere sometime had had need to whack (a lot) the rear wheel hub with a hammer.  I wonder why?    This meant that the lip of the bearing housing was damaged and I had to file and linish the lip out in order to create a clear exit for the bearing.

As always, removing the bearings wasn't as easy as I'd hoped.  I had no cross-section drawing of the wheel hubs, so I wasn't quite sure what it was that held them in the right location other than a number of "interior" and "exterior" "stays" (overly complicated machined spacer tubes).  It turns out that each bearing is pressed home to a lip, so driving the bearing through to extract it is not an option.  I turned to google to ask "How to extract a bearing from a blind hole" and I wasn't keen on either of the three most common suggestions;
1.  Weld a bead to the race
2.  Force it out with hydraulic pressure of a grease gun
3.  Buy a blind hole bearing puller
So in the end I thought I'd see if I could pull them out with a Rawl-Bolt.  And with a little bit of heat here and there, I was delighted to find that the bearings came out without any fuss at all.

I bought new bearings for about £3 a piece.  I opted for shielded (zz) bearings as some of the extracted ones were shielded one-side and there are no grease points down there in that quite harsh environment of splashing puddles and road grit

And so on to fitting the new bearings.
I am a big fan of freezing bearings to contract them before fitting so an overnight stay next to the frozen peas and oven chips was in order.
A little propane gas on the hubs to give them a little expansion and the bearings just dropped home (encouraged with a hammer) - simple

I was a little worried still about the state of some of the spokes - some of them appeared very loose and had certainly suffered at the hand of whoever it was that had beaten the rear hub with a hammer.  It crossed my mind a number of times to maybe bite the bullet and get the wheels in for a professional overhaul, paint and re-spoke.  However, when I inspected the spokes a little closer, it appeared that they were serviceable and I could simply tighten the loose spokes - I even attempted to 'tune' them to the same tension - I'm not sure I've done a perfect job, but I think I've done a good enough job in order to get the bike rolling (and maybe even MOT'd)