My n12 is making tons of noise. When I first bought it was silent ,but then Ive taken it apart a couple of times and its making lots of noise. Is there anything I can do?
Get the bearing, desheild it, clean it with acetone with an airtight container, wait 10min, take out bearing, get air duster, dry bearing, get a needle/lube, put lube on needle, get needle/lube and put the Lube on to one of the balls, know get a pencil and bearing and spin it.
3 Questions. 1. what do you mean desheild?
2. where do you buy acetone and how much does it cost?
3.when you say clean it do you mean soak it in the container?
There may be metal covers on the sides of the bearing. They’ll need to be removed. Look it up on YouTube on “how to remove yoyo bearing shields”. I think the Magic YoYo bearings are not shielded.
Acetone: Pure acetone. Get it at a hardware store or even Walmart. DO NOT get the nail removing stuff.
When we say clean, shake it up in that container, let it soak for 5-15 minutes, remove, drain, spin dry, lube if desired and replace. Shields are optional but I recommend them going back on.
Cleaning it thoroughly (not just soaking, but agitating in solvent and then blowing out with some compressed air!) should get rid of any debris.
A cleaned bearing will be quieter than one with crud in it. But clean dry bearings still make some noise. Many MANY people prefer their bearings this way. I’m not one of them, though–
To then quiet the bearing down again, you should use some liquid THIN lube, and only a little of it. The popular recommendation is to dip a needle in oil and touch it to a ball. Do this twice.
Me, my current favourite is to douse that sucker in two or three drops, work it through, and blast off any excess with an air compressor. It’s a waste of oil by comparison (with the needle method, your oil could last years!) but I like the satisfaction of knowing the oil has been distributed throughout.
After the air compressor blast, I don’t even usually have to break in much at all. 2 or 3 minutes of heavy play and it’s done.
But that’s just me… and you need the air compressor (a can won’t do it)… the needle method works perfectly fine as well.
Oh, the can of air will work great. I just wouldn’t trust it for my unorthodox “blast away all the sloppy excess of oil”. It’ll be fine for removing debris, spinning the bearing, and getting rid of some excess lube. In fact, it will PROBABLY be fine even for my technique… I may have exaggerated a bit.
Great thing about cleaning bearings is that if it doesn’t work, you just start again! No need to fear committing to this little bit of maintenance knowledge. Go right into it, and you can’t really “lose” other than maybe having to try a round 2.
Absolutely normal (Studio42, you and I are probably thinking of “loose” in different ways here!). The majority of my yoyos will have the axle unscrew from both halves as I take it apart. I always tighten it back into one half as soon as I can so that I don’t lose it.
You can use teflon tape, nail polish, or BLUE Loc-tite (not red) if it really bothers you: screw it together, unscrew it again. One half will have a tighter grip on the bearing (well, some yoyos don’t grip the bearing at all, which is also fine!). If you decide to use Loc-tite (or whatever) in one half, put the axle in the OPPOSITE half of where the bearing naturally wants to go.
But I don’t do this. I leave all axles “loose” in my throws.
I have to agree with what you said. I read it as the axle coming loose as excess wear and tear and from over-tightening: the BAD kind of axle loose! I was not reading it as the axle being able to screw properly into either half, but is not secured in place via some method other than being threaded in.
I’m with Greg P. thought. I don’t use, or at least haven’t had to use LocTite or teflon tape. I would rather the axle be “free”. The key thing that he points out is that if the yoyo is screwing down tight and not coming loose when it’s not supposed to, then you’re fine.
If you are going to use LocTite, use the BLUE. DO NOT use the red!!! You want a minimum hold.
Just get pure acetone and you’ll be fine. Should be under $9 for a container and should last you a good long time.
I know this is sort of bumping this thread, but will a bike pump seriously work? I don’t have a can of compressed air, but it seems like a bike pump would work.
I’ve done this. It can work, but it’s awkward to use unless you’ve got one that has a place to rest your foot on the base. A foot pump works good too.
I’ve got issues with transportation. I don’t get to head out in the car to get the supplies I need when I need them so sometimes I have to improvise.
If you can use a ball needle with it, that helps really concentrate the airflow. Enough will go out the front hole to be sufficient.
What really works in an air compressor. Once you’ve used a proper compressor, you realize that a bike pump or even canned air just doesn’t have the PSI needed to give you full confidence that you’ve done the best you can do.
No doubt. I don’t have one, either… save up batches of my spares and do them when we’re over visiting. Canned air seems to run out too quickly for me. I have a bike pump, but I just don’t feel it does the job.
What we need is to devise a way to store enough pressure in a container by using the bike pump that we can then release on-demand. One pump at a time just doesn’t cut it; we need a tank of some sort. I wonder if I could make something useful with a 2L pop bottle… hmm…
A plastic soda bottle won’t hold the pressure. Something like a small metal propane tank or super-small diving-type tank would be safer. I’m sure if I really dug in, I could find one for cheap. A lot of people buy the equipment for one-off projects and then realize “gee, I really don’t need this anymore” and then dump them off for cheap.