All hardware sucks
This is the non-power side bearing race from the Shimano 3d71 dynamo hub I bought last winter so I could get AWAY from battery headlights before I started to ride stupidly long distances at night this year. Note the pretty little pattern embossed into the race? That’s not good. Every time the wheel turns, the ball bearings go sailing over those little craters, hammering down into the pits and flaking off little pieces of metal that get mixed in with the grease and spread all around. I don’t think it’s brinelling (or false brinelling) though; the descriptions of bearing race fatigue I’ve read about seem to say that this sort of damage is material fatigue.
And I’ve barely put 7000(I checked my gps logs and it says I rode 6400 miles between the day I put the wheel on and took it off. Some of that was on the trek, but I’m missing several hundred miles due to the gps running out of power and/or not even being charged in the first place) miles onto this hub, too.
I guess I’ll pull the front wheel off my trek and put that on the mlcm for the populaire tomorrow.
Hopefully my LBS can get replacement bearing races that won’t cost more than replacing the dynamo.