Inner Bearing Puller

A failed cartridge bearing won't come out the way it went in. It's seated in the hub shell on an interference fit, and the inner race is the only surface you can reach from the side that hasn't already been pressed against by the shoulder. Reaching the inner race with anything that doesn't pull straight (a punch, a screwdriver, a pry bar against the seal) cocks the bearing in the bore and risks damaging the shell on the way out. The Inner Bearing Puller is the workflow that pulls the bearing on the inner race, square to the bore, with the load carried by a slide hammer instead of a lateral pry.

How it works

The 689/2BI-US is a slide-hammer puller built around an expanding collet system. You drop the collet through the inside of the bearing, expand it against the inner race, and the 1 kg (2.2 lb) slide hammer mounted on the shaft draws the bearing out by axial impact alone. No side load, no contact with the seal, no contact with the shell. The bearing comes out true; the shell is ready to accept a new bearing on the press.

The included collet set covers the inner-diameter range of nearly every bicycle cartridge bearing in the catalog:

• 6.5 – 8 mm
• 10 – 12 mm
• 12 – 15 mm
• 17 – 20 mm
• 22 – 28 mm
• 30 – 36 mm

Six collets total. Modern hub bearings (the 6000-series, 6800-series, and 6900-series rolling stock that dominates current cartridge designs) fall inside this envelope, along with the non-standard codes (15267, 1728, and similar) that show up on current DT Swiss, Industry Nine, and most current MTB hub designs.

Compatibility

The puller works on any cartridge bearing within the collet size range, in any bore. Hub bearings are the dominant use case. The same puller handles suspension-pivot bearings on full-suspension frames, headset cartridge bearings when they're seized in the cup, and any other application where the bearing's inner race is the only available pulling surface.

In the box

• Slide hammer with shaft (1 kg)
• Expanding-collet set (6 sizes)

Includes: all collet sizes pre-fitted in the kit. Replacement collets are sold separately as the Collet for 689/2BI 689.1/4 in matching chrome-vanadium steel.

Built in Zreče, Slovenia

Unior has been forging hand tools in Zreče since 1919, and is the official technical partner of multiple World Tour and downhill teams. The 689/2BI-US is the tool we reach for first on any cartridge-bearing pull at the shop. The slide hammer's weight gives the bearing a single clean axial pop instead of a series of hammer taps that risk cocking the bearing in the bore, and the chrome-vanadium collet set has stayed in spec across years of bench use.

Pro tip from our mechanics

If a bearing won't come out cleanly with one or two slide-hammer strokes, the problem isn't the puller. It's that the bearing is fused to the shell through corrosion, and the inner race is going to lift out of the outer race before the outer race lifts out of the shell. Stop, drop the puller, give the bearing a soak in penetrating oil for 10 minutes, and try again. Where this matters in context: Bearing and headset service: a workshop guide →