Avant Garde playing as fixed axel

So I got my Avante Garde in my Mystery Box yesterday. Managed to get the Colorway i wanted!  Today i was finally able to throw it. Sad news. On first throw it was responsive. Ok w/e, that happens with new bearing sometimes.  So upon further investigation. I noticed a small gap between the bearing and the yoyo. I assumed that it just wasn’t seated properly and tried to push it the rest of the way on.  Man was that a terrible idea. It took a lot of force to get the the rest of the way in. So much so that I probably shouldn’t have done it.  So I put the yoyo back together and gave it a throw and the bearing didn’t spin at all.  It returned immediately. Uh Oh.  Here is where it gets really bad. I took the yoyo back apart and I could get the bearing out, i tried my tool, pliers and freezer (at first 15 minutes, the 30, then 45) and nothing worked.  I managed to work a small gap back underneath the bearing and got it off with a small screwdriver.  I’m posting here and not contacting Andre because I believe that I damaged the yoyo trying to remove the bearing.  I’m afraid to go any further.  Any suggestions with be greatly appreciated.

bearing with gap. sorry for the crappy quality I only have a phone.

I was trying to post other pictures but imgur stopped working for some reason. (reddit must be clogging lol)

Can’t tell at all what the picture is…

You might have to go to the last resort and break the bearing in a vice. :-\

After that you would need to get the inner race off of the bearing post. :-\

I removed image tags because of the size of the pic. Maybe you can resize or crop it. Looks like it’s taken from too close.

I see what you did. Breaking the bearing could help.

I can’t really tell what’s wrong from the pics, anyway you can provide quality pics?

emailed YYF to see if they could help me out. worse that happens is they say that they can’t help right?

here are some better picks. only of aftermath. i don’t want to put a bearing back on.

That was probably a defective bearing, the yoyo should be fine with some sanding on the rough spots and a new bearing.

It needs a lot of sanding to prevent it from sawing through strings.

Are you trying to be funny? You’re not.

yyf has pretty good customer service, they’ll probably exchange it for you. they did for my yuuksta that was fubar due to manufacture defects.

That HAS to be replaced. That’s pretty messed up.

I think in this instance, I think the best bet is to contact YYF.

I’m sounding really down on YYF lately. I’m not. I like YYF. However, I do have concerns with YYF products, namely this overly tight bearing seat stuff.

I actually had a very similar problem with my Avant Garde. It didn’t get quite this bad, but the bearing seat and the bearing just did not play nice together.

good news! YYF emailed me back. They are sending a replacement!

Thats awesome! Do you getta keep your old one? haha

they didn’t specify.

Then probably yes! :stuck_out_tongue:

No, from the old picture I thought the bearing was warped and got stuck at a weird angle.

got my new Avante Garde today. they didn’t have anymore blue/silver so they sent me a black/red.

it has a Matte finish on it. Or at least it feels matte.