Long story short, I wanted to clean my Butter and Collapsar bearings today. Its been 15 years since ive de-shielded a yoyo bearing.
Took me a few hours of prying the shield out because I just couldnt unclip the c-clip.
What are the chances Ive compromised my bearing?
I dont have enough experience this go around to know if my performance and spintime has been affected.
Poked a whole in my finger twice to lol… it got frustrating real quick.
Ive done this before 
my bearing is perfectly fine though
I seriously doubt it’s sustained any meaningful damage. I think you’d hear or feel it pretty much immediately on a throw if you managed to bend a bearing cage or gouge one of the races. The inner and outer races are relatively thick metal that is difficult to damage in a meaningful way.
So before I got the hand at removing bearing shields, stabbed through about 5 or 6 of them.
It worked just fine on all but one bearing I went extra ham on. That bearing would no longer spin freely, and had a crunchy feeling when you forced it.
If you want to get better at deshielding, try angling the pin as close to parallel to the shield as possible. Should make it easier to pry up the ring. Definitely struggled at first
Yup! You’ll know when you’ve damaged the bearing. It does indeed get “crunchy”.
I received a BST yoyo with a bearing that needed to be “cleaned”. No matter the amount of cleaning I did, it was noisy as spun down in less than a second.
If you get some decent spin time (10+ sec) from a flick of the finger you’re in good shape.
De-shielding can be frustrating. It does get easier with everyone you do. what @sergchz says helps. Also of note is the shape of the C-clip. You’ll want to come at from the proper side depending on how your holding the bearing. This picture is not exactly our type of bearing but the shape of the clip is similar. In this position you obviously want to get this pin under the left side. use a sewing needle.
Forgot I did one today so I fished this out of the garbage. Center track bearing clip
See how you have to get the needle under the left side? Helps if you have a magnifying glass to see what orientation the clip is in. Now that I think of it, most, if not all the ones I’ve done, are in this orientation.
Im so sorry for the kate reply.
Both my bearings seem to be in working order:)
Thank you so much to everyone who chimed in, youve all given me such excellent advise!
Ive been playing with my Collapsar so much that I struggle with my butter, all my moves are off because it feels like a feather lol.
Performance wise, Id need to be very fast and smooth to knock out combos on the butter it seems. The collapsar has exponentially more power, just unbelivable the difference.
Monkey madness has been a PITA, my string mayhe to short 
everytime I go for the final pop the string snags
Luigi something or other has been a fun trick! Looking to learn more off the wrist mount.
I really eant to learn what kinds of tricks people out together in there ‘fast combos’
Ive been trapeze, 1.5 mount, kamakaze mount, double or nothing, kamakaze, 1.5 mount kinda deal, then I can throw it into a bucket and luigi out (I should re-learn cold fusion) thats a neat trick to add into the mix.
Ive only had maybe 30-60 mins a day to practice, but in two weeks Ive gone from a wholping trapeze to some pretty neat things😁
I got so frustrated with removing those damn clips that if I have any problems with the shielded bearing in a new throw I replace it with a bearing that I bought without shields. I’m too old to spend my time getting that angry at things I bought to have fun with.
