I was wondering if you guys could help me diagnose what’s up with one of my new yo-yos:
A TopYo Colossus IV arrived on Monday, and I’ve been throwing it, let’s say, a couple hours each day since. I found the bearing to be super loud(I would say my Horizon Ultra is what I’m comparing that against; I haven’t been throwing for super long), so two days ago I decided to clean the bearing and apply some lube, just to see if it helped. Full disclosure: I kept the bearing shields on and definitely applied way too much thin lube, because I’m both lazy and scared of messing things up! As a result, the Colossus ended up semi-responsive, which is to say it could come back up with a tug, but was playing unresponsive just fine. And it was a little quieter! I figured the extra lube would eventually be dealt with by playing with it.
Fast forward to today, and I noticed the Colossus had gotten loud again, and then a couple of hours ago I noticed almost a clicking to it as it spun(let the record show I don’t have the most consistent throw technique, either). I took it apart, and noticed that the axle wasn’t fully secured to the end of the yo-yo it was screwed into. To be thorough, I decided to clean the bearing again(properly this time!), and I threaded the axle on the other side. It went back to being unresponsive right after the cleaning, but after breaking it in for a little bit, I would call it full on responsive as it is now. I cracked it open again, and again the axle is loose.
I’ve done a little bit of digging, and it seems like the solution is to use Loctite or something similar to lock the axle into one end, but I thought that was a problem usually created by over tightening the yo, which I really don’t think I have. Is this just a problem some throws have? Is there anything I’m missing? Help would be appreciated!
The steel axle should never be “loose”. Can you define specifically what you mean by this? The axle threads into the aluminum and there should be zero wiggle.
The steel axle can come unscrewed from either side, notice there is a hex key hole in one side of the axle, that’s why I like to loctite one side of the axle in so it always comes out the “right” way when disassembled, with the hex key visible for… er… hexinating.
Are you sure you’re screwing it together tight enough? Not too tight because that would strip the aluminum threads in the halves and doing that will ruin the yo-yo, but “hand tight” so that it’s firmly closed around the bearing and connected to the other half of the yo-yo?
It’s hard to tell but it sounds to me like you’re not screwing it closed quite tight enough.
So basically, after opening up the yo-yo(after it has been firmly tightened by hand) I take the half that the axle is threaded into, and I twist the axle with my fingers, and it is loose. I even just retightened the axle(again, by hand), put the two halves together, nice and tight but not anymore than that, then reopened it. Sure enough, loose axle!
Okay so it was for sure the latter, I just used a hex tool to screw it in tight, and it’s no longer coming loose. So that’s good! However, the whole yo-yo still plays responsive, and I just cleaned the bearing so I’m not sure what’s happening there.
Spin out any extra thin lube with compressed air. Just spin the bearing at ultra high speed, wiping away any excess that comes out. Do this a few times in both directions until you get 6+ seconds of finger flick spin time and you’re good.