Read More

SINCE 1982
While perusing our Facebook newsfeed I saw a
post suggesting Interbike “be purchased by a company that could use more of the profits to build the
bicycle advocacy movement.” It was a post I didn’t
expect to ever see. But then it hit me. Maybe we
haven’t done a good-enough job communicating
our involvement in bicycle advocacy, and the fact
that our staff is made up of several bicycle-industry
specific people.
So here are 3 things you may not have known
about Interbike:
We help put butts on bikes:
Interbike has been one of the largest
contributors to Bikes Belong for several years, and in 2013 will be the single
largest financial contributor to their organization. We are a sponsor of the National Bike
Summit and our team has met with government
representatives on Capitol Hill along with other
bike industry advocates & industry sponsors in
recent years. We also contribute to IMBA, the
NBDA, and we sit on the board of directors for
Bikes Belong and BPSA.
We help IBD’s succeed:
• The IBD Summit brings dealers and
expert presenters together to help
solve issues affecting IBD’s. We’ve
secured leaders in retail design, triathlon sales,
online marketing strategy and the NBDA’s P2
Group panel to help IBDs build their business
and drive profits.
• The Electric Bike Media Event brought top-tier
consumer media together with ebike manufacturers to raise awareness for a category with
major growth potential in the US. To date coverage has reached 8.4 million readers with additional planned stories reaching 30 million more.
We’ve been on your side – Here are
some of the titles we’ve held in the
bike industry over the past 30 years:
retail sales clerk, professional bike racer,
territory sales rep, marketing director, VP sales
& marketing, national sales manager, CEO and
“retail sales guy who can install u-locks and
bottle cages like a champ – but that’s the extent
of his mechanical abilities.”
While the September trade show is certainly why we
exist, Interbike works beyond the trade show to
help grow our sport. Like you, we’ve got a passion
for this industry, we ride and we operate our business to help the greater good – to change the world
through cycling.
Justin Gottlieb
Communications and PR Director
Interbike
Bottom bracket designs
evolve to quiet the creak
By Matt Wiebe
APTOS, CA—There may be a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel
for retailers frustrated with creaky,
plastic-y, non-serviceable OEM
bottom brackets in $8,000 bikes.
A new generation of aftermarket designs goes directly after creak
and serviceability issues. Cartridge
designs from Praxis Works and
Real World Cycling are made of
aluminum and thread together inside press-fit shells.
Most of this first wave of designs
target adapting Shimano cranks
into BB30-sized frame shells—socalled converter or conversion bottom brackets—since this style is in
high demand. But expect the same
tricks to trickle down to other sizes
and bottom bracket applications.
“Using separate left and right
cups means they can articulate independently; they can creak and
walk right out of the frame,” said
Adam Haverstock, Praxis Works’
director of marketing and sales.
“By going to a cartridge-style
design, our bearings index off
each other and are not as impacted
by damaged or out-of-tolerance
shells,” he said.
The $85 Praxis Conversion
BB is designed to adapt Shimano
cranks to BB30 or with a shim to
PF30 frames. It offers a similarly
designed version for Specialized
OSBB bottom bracket shells.
The non-drive part of Praxis’
aluminum cartridge is press fit into
any BB30 frame with a headset
press. The drive side of the cartridge
Photo courtesy Real World Cycling LLC
CHANGING THE WORLD
THROUGH CYCLING
Real World Cycling’s cartridges retail for $55 to $130.
The two ends of Praxis Works’ Conversion BBs thread together and lock to
the bottom bracket shell to eliminate creak and keep the cups from moving
inside the shell.
is threaded into the non-drive side
using standard Shimano external
bottom bracket tools.
As the drive side cup is threaded in, it expands a collet pressing
against the drive-side bearing seat
in the shell. This “locks” the cartridge to the shell, which should
eliminate creak and keep the cups
from moving within the shell.
The cartridge has a slight hourglass shape to provide clearance
within the shell to eliminate any
potential for noise there.
Praxis includes a Delrin shim
with its BB30 cartridge for use with
the larger PF30. Similar to installation into a BB30 shell, the nondrive side of the cartridge and shim
are pressed into the shell, and the
BB tools mechanics are training on
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO—The Barnett Bicycle Institute
devotes more than five times the time on bottom bracket
maintenance and repair in its classes than it did five years
ago. The Institute focuses mostly on BB30 issues, briefly
covering FT30, BB86/91, BBRight and others.
Yet this coverage extends to more than 100 pages in
the Barnett’s Manual.
In the United Bicycle Institute’s two-week mechanics
course, bottom bracket instruction takes a full day, and
it too focuses on BB30 along with an overview of other
systems.
“It’s too big of a topic to cover everything, so we had
to look at market saturation, and BB30 has been on the
market so long and has the greatest penetration,” said Matt
Eames, UBI instructor.
The biggest topic covered during instruction on non-
threaded designs is creak.
“Of course the bottom bracket may not be the source
of creak, but it frequently is. So how is a shop going to deal
with bottom bracket creak?” said John Barnett, Barnett
Bicycle Institute founder.
“On BB30 systems, lube or Loctite can work. But on
the plastic-cup PF30 designs, Loctite and plastic don’t work
together, so there is only lube. You also can ream and face
shells. Can a mechanic completely eliminate creak over the
life of the bearing? Probably not,” he added.
Since the OEM press-fit cups are plastic and not rebuildable, no time is spent on servicing bearings in plastic
cups.
Both schools train their mechanics using headset tools
to install and remove cups and bearings where they are the
best options. But they also teach the use of specialty tools
April 15, 2013
drive side is threaded in. As the collet expands it presses the
Delrin into the shell.
Real World Cycling (RWC) converters are based on KCNC
aluminum cartridges and use Enduro bearings. They range in
price from $55 to $130 depending on bearing choice—standard, angular contact or ceramic. The cartridges adapt Shimano cranks, as well as most GXP cranks, to BB30 frames.
RWC offers a different cartridge to adapt Shimano cranks to
the larger PF30 shell.
In addition to the cartridge approach, these RWC bottom
brackets minimize metal-on-metal contact, and out-of-spec
shells, by using O-rings to isolate the cartridge from the bottom bracket shell.
“You cannot face or ream a carbon frame, so you have to
be able to deal with things being slightly out of spec. There is
just enough give in the O-rings that you should be able to push
the cups in with your hand or lightly with a press,” said Chris
Streeter, Real World Cycling’s owner.
“In metal shells, minimizing metal-on-metal contact
with the O-rings should help eliminate creak as well,” he
added.
Once the cups are pushed in, they are threaded together
with standard Shimano bottom bracket tools until the cups
meet in the center and contact is made between the flanges and
the shell.
Wheels Manufacturing recently released an aluminum cup
PF30 bottom bracket that is not an adapter design—it works
with BB30 cranks. It’s available with traditional bearings for
$49, and angular contact bearing and ceramic bearing options
are priced accordingly.
Like the RWC cartridges, it uses O-rings to minimize
metal-on-metal contact. But its two bearing cups press together
like OEM systems; they are not threaded together like in the
cartridge designs. Since the cups are alloy the bearings can be
replaced.
In addition to stopping creak and bearing creep, shops also
have to be able to fit single or double cranks to mountain bikes
or triples to road bikes with non-threaded shells.
Wheels Manufacturing’s $200 BB30/PF30 65-piece Universal Adapter kit help shops deal with non-standard requests. It
provides enough adapters to fit four Shimano cranks, and four
SRAM cranks to most styles of non-threaded bottom brackets, including mountain bikes, 2x10 systems, narrow-shell road
bikes, road triples and other combinations.
“It’s not only getting Shimano cranks into BB30 frames;
shops are dealing with single, double and triple road and
mountain bike systems. This kit not only provides the right
adapters for cranks, it also offers wave-washers so shops can
adjust chainline,” said Dan DePaemelaere, Wheels Manufacturing sales manager.
from Enduro, Park Tool, Shimano and Wheels Manufacturing.
To press 8606 bearings in and out of BB30 bottom brackets,
Enduro’s $140 BRT-002 provides a threaded insertion and extraction option. Park Tool’s $37 BBT-30.3 relies on hammer tapping to
perform the same tasks and also works on PF30 systems.
For 8605 bearings common to BB86/92 systems for Shimanocompatible cranks, Wheels Manufacturing’s expanding collet bearing presses like its $160 Press-6 grab just the inner bearing race for
insertion and extraction.
Shimano has two Press Fit BB86/92 bottom bracket tools. The
$66 TL-BB12 is a threaded cup press tool, and the $110 TL-BB11 is an
impact cup removal tool.
Park Tool’s $42 BBT-90.3 looks like a headset race removal tool,
but it is designed to remove and install the bearings and bearing
cups used in BB86, BB90 and BB92 bottom brackets from a variety
of suppliers.
Park’s $12 BBT-10 is a tool resembling a wing nut that removes
and installs the adjusting caps on Shimano cranks so correct bearing preload can be easily dialed in. —Matt Wiebe
13