We posted about our cross seals a few years ago but I wanted to re-visit that posting. Below is the original post:
We get this question quite a bit. I thought a blog post would clear it up. First, our cyclocross seals are not just for cyclocross. They are for anyone who rides in bad weather, races a lot or just wants to protect their bearings a little better.
Our cyclocross seal is a unique seal that while initially more "draggy" will break in and perform the same as our regular seals, while maintaining better sealing performance. When chosen, we install these on the outside of the bearing so that they protect against the elements. For some extreme cases, we'll also install them on the inside seal as well, but most of the time our normal seal is fine there.
They are really a great seal and we find more and more customers choosing this option. The key is to ignore how the BB performs at first, because there will be a lot of drag. After riding it for a few hundred miles, things get really good and the performance starts to shine.
These are only available for our BBs.
These are still a great option for our BBs. As more and more people start racing cyclocross or just want to ride year round, the extra sealing protection of our cross seals is a great benefit. With these installed, except for some extreme cases, the only maintenance needed is to periodically pull your cranks, remove the plastic dustcaps and wipe away any grit that has worked it's way in between the dustcap and seal. That's it! You could always add more grease at this time to, just remove the seal, apply some of our grease and then re-install the seal.
And whether you greased the bearing or just removed the dustcap and wiped away any grit, be sure to add a bead of our grease to the outside of the seal BEFORE pressing the plastic dustcap back on. This is to help with protection and keep things quiet down there.
