Cheap or expensive -- Which bottom bracket to choose?

If you've read my previous post on the toll of winter, you know that my bottom bracket is grindy. I haven't kept exact records of how many kilometers I have ridden with it, but I'm pretty sure that it's only about two years old and definitely has less than 10 000 km on it. That's pretty disappointing for a cartridge bottom bracket. I've looked at different options for a replacement and it was hard to decide between them:

• get another cheap Shimano cartridge BB and hope that this time it will last longer?
• get the really nice SKF bottom bracket that has a 100 000 km/10 year warranty?
• move away from square taper BBs and try a external bottom bracket system?

The last option I did not really consider. My cranks are still in good shape, as are all three chainrings. In addition, people's experiences with external bottom bracket systems appear to be mixed. In theory they seem like a great idea (easier to install, larger bearings) but in practice it hasn't quite worked out like that. Therefore, it came down to deciding between cheap and expensive. Interestingly, in the world of square taper bottom brackets there isn't really any middle ground: square taper system have become less and less common and SKF is, as far as I know, the only high-level option.

I was really tempted by the SKF bottom brackets, currently only distributed by Compass Bicycles. A 100 000 km warranty (given my annual mileage it would probably be the 10 years that come first) is pretty impressive, and as exchanging bottom brackets is one of the more time consuming maintenance items it can make a lot of sense -- install and forget! The price for those carefree 100 megameters is fairly steep, though: 129 USD plus shipping (and probably taxes and customs for us Canadians). Compare that with the cheap Shimano option: at the LBS, a UN-55 bottom bracket costs 30 dollars, meaning I can buy four to five Shimano BBs for the price of one SKF (if you live in the US you can get them for less than $17 shipped on Amazon. Simplistic rational choice economics would probably tell us to go for SKF: if my new Shimano BBs are going fail like the last one, at only 10 000 km, five of them will only last for 50 000 km -- versus the at least 100 000 km of the SKF. But what if the SKF breaks down before that and I'll have to pay for the shipping back to the US? And are kilometers the right metric if I'm riding less then 10 000 km per year anyway? What if my bike gets stolen (not that unlikely in Montreal)? What if the new Shimano bottom bracket will last much longer than the previous one, as they do for a lot of people? On the other had, isn't buying cheap but crappy things horribly unsustainable and making me a bad person?

Those are all legitimate questions and to some of them there are no easy answers. In the end, I bought another Shimano BB UN-55: The LBS had them in stock, a 30 dollar hole hurts much less in my wallet than a 150 dollar hole, and I'll just have to hope that this time I'm more lucky.

Which trade-offs do you make in the realm of bottom brackets? Have you moved beyond square taper and Octalink? Or are you a retrogrouch with good old cup-and-cone bearings?

Winter's toll. And a winter bike?

Winter is far from over here in Montreal. But because of a snapped gear cable I decided to do a spring tune-up on Wolfgang, my all-purpose, all-year bike. A lot of people have "winter beaters," but to me that never made too much sense: I really like my bike and don't see the point of riding an inferior quality bike at a time that places the highest demands on bike and rider. Especially, I wouldn't want to give up on my hub generator and LED lighting at the darkest time of the year. So far, this has worked well for me and the wear and tear of components didn't seem to be particularly bad. But somehow this winter seems to have been worse than previous, if not in weather but in damage to parts. My rear rim was destroyed a couple of weeks ago, after less than 10 000 km.

Busted rim

And during my tune-up today I discovered a whole bunch of other issues:

• my bottom bracket feels noticeably grindy
• the front brakes, Avid Single Digit 7, didn't turn that well around the brake bosses
• the Tiagra front derailleur is sticky and doesn't want to go to the smallest chainring any more
• all the cables and housing are in miserable condition and have to be replaced
• a lot of the bolts, despite being made of stainless steel, show a lot of surface corrosion
• one of the Shimano M424 pedals feels crunchy in the bearings

I'm not quite sure why this winter has been worse than others. I might have ridden more (last year I didn't ride between mid-January and the end of March because of a broken wrist), Montreal winters might be somewhat harder than those in Ithaca, and in some cases it is probably just accumulative damage.

This can't be good for your bike, can it?

It seems tempting to add a dedicated winter bike to the stable, and if I had the resources (and permission from the accomplice) I would probably get a bike with the following features:

• dynohub and lower quality LED lighting (e.g. the B&M Lyt): As stated above, I wouldn't want to give up on my dynohub-powered lighting system. However, for riding in the city I don't need a B&M Cyo or Philips SafeRide light. It's more about being seen than about seeing.
• frame with upright position: A frame that allows me to ride in a more upright position would help in snowy and icy conditions.
• SPD-compatible pedals: I also wouldn't want to give up on SPD pedals and I'm happy with my Lake winter cycling boots.
• plastic saddle: Whereas for long rides a leather saddle is an absolute requirement, for commuting a plastic saddle will do and also take care of the issue of having to cover your saddle---this season I managed to lose 3(!) saddle covers.
• drop bars: A lot of people prefer straight, Albatross, or North road bars for a winter bike; this makes sense from a balance and control perspective; however, my wrists are not built for any kind of non-drop bar, even on reasonably short rides.
• good and wide studded tires: Wheel size is not particularly important for me but good studded tires are a must. And some wideness helps with floating over snow.
• disc brakes (at least in the front): Rim brakes with drop bar levers can be pretty problematic in wet conditions, and most of the time winter means wet roads. Therefore I want disc brakes, probably mechanical ones like the Avid BB7 because of the drop bars. In addition, rim wear is not an issue with disc brakes.



Not a good studded tire

• 2-speed Sturmey Archer Duomatic kickback hub with low gearing: I'm not a single-speed or fixed gear person because my knees don't like me mashing up hills (and hills I like!); at the same time, derailleur systems don't particularly like road salt and constant wetness. A 2-speed Sturmey Archer kickback hub thus would be perfect: no cables, allows to use a 1/8" chain, and has more than one gear. I've never ridden a Duomatic hub so maybe it's not as good as I think.

I don't really see me building up this bike any time soon. But one may dream while wainting for spring...

The toll of winter

I've said it before and I'll say it again: salt is bad for your bike's health. Don't believe me? Well, then check out the following pictures of Wolfgang.

These brakes no longer move by themselves.

Hopeless...

Okay, not directly salt-related, but anyway

Due to my wrist injury, Wolfgang was sitting outside for several weeks and when I tried reactivating him, it was pretty hopeless. The chain was stiff, the front derailleur only moved when being kicked with the foot; and the rear canti brakes didn't reset themselves anymore.

So I switched the chain, which also required me to put on a new Shimano XT 11-34 cassette, replaced the Tektro Oryx cantis with an Avid SD7, and replaced some of the brake and shifter cables. Quite annoying, but that's the price you have to pay for riding all year on well-cleared roads in Upstate NY.

Spring maintenance and upgrades

The weather is lovely outside and tomorrow we'll be going on the first FLCC Sunday Ride of the year. Today (and a good deal of yesterday), however, I did a lot of work on Wolfgang. I installed a new granny gear, a new front derailleur, I checked and repacked the rear hub bearings; switched from Ritchey Cross Tires to the Conti Gatorskin slicks; and I wired my accomplice's BUMM Toplight Line Plus rear light.

Switching from double to triple clearly was the most laborious process and actually I wasn't able to complete it successfully. I had bought a Shimano XT FD-M773 front derailleur, a Salsa 26t chainring and a 118mm bottom bracket to adjust the chainline. Using the fabulous Park Tool instructions, the cranks came off, the bottom bracket was removed (required several attempts and a bunch of WD40), threads cleaned and regreased, and the new bottom bracket installed.

As I had to take off the chain anyway and the current chain had reached the .75 mark, I also switched the chain back to the old chain. What I immediately noticed was the difference in corrosion between the two. The old one was an Sram PC 971, the more current one to be switched out a PC 951. Despite mostly fenderless use during the 2008/2009 winter, the 971 was completely corrosion free; whereas the last winter had left significant traces on the 951. The difference between the two chains is just a couple of dollars--and the fact that the 971 is nickel-plated. I'll definitely keep this in mind when buying another chain.

Finally, I put on the third chainring and the new derailleur and started adjusting. This is where the trouble began. I couldn't get the derailleur to clear the small chainring, even when the L limit screw was set to the max. I initially thought I had done something wrong, maybe with the height adjustment. But after extensive consultation with my online friends, I've come to the conclusion that derailleur and bottom bracket just don't go together, even though the specifications and Glenn's expertise implied otherwise. What I'll try next is to re-install the old Tiagra derailleur and see if it's going to work -- apparently double front derailleurs often also work for triple.

Odo Wolfgang 3954 km
Odo Gunnar 1048 km

V-Brakes and Drop Bars

For the record: I exchanged brake pad inserts on Wolfgang, switching from the Tektro stock pads to Koolstop Dual Compound. So the original pads lasted about 4 months and maybe 1500 km (no record keeping yet back then, unfortunately). Given the adverse conditions of winter I guess that's a reasonable value.

The old pads on dirty, dirty Wolfgang

What remains of the pad...

New pads installed

While switching the pads, I also installed a new brake noodle with an integrated adjuster barrel.. This is a nifty way to deal with one downside of v-brakes on drop bars. With straight bars and the respective brake levers, you have an adjuster barrel integrated into the lever, allowing to compensate for the wear of the brake. With drop bar levers, on the other hand, you have to do this compensation by loosening and readjusting the brake wire. This is somewhat tricky/time-consuming, and, more importantly, it's not good for the longevity of the brake wire. The new noodle takes care of this issue and it was only 4 bucks.

© Rivendell Bicycles

One issue I'm still dealing with is brake squeal. The Koolstop instructions advise you to install the pads without toe-in because they're already curved themselves. My first attempt, however, lead to horrible brake squeal. I tried fixing it by adding toe-in but this didn't do anything. What did alleviate the problem was to increase the torque on the brake bosses (in combination with having the brake pads installed as advised by Koolstop). This doesn't entirely get rid of the squeal but it has definitely gotten better.

Odo Wolfgang: 3645 km (this is a late post; brake pads were actually installed at 3560 km)

Maintenance and Upgrade

Temperatures have gone up slightly (i. e. it's slightly above freezing and sunny), getting me motivated to work on Wolfgang a bit. Operation 1 was switching the front brake lever, operation 2 just maintenance.

Last October, after getting more and more annoyed by mediocre stopping power and horrible screeching, I had switched Wolfgang's stock Tektro Oryx cantis to Avid Single Digit 7 V-brakes. Because of the different mechanical advantage required by V-brakes, I installed a Problemsolvers travel agent, a small roll that gets installed in place of the brake noodle and that changes the amount of cable travel. This worked reasonably well (one issue: the holder for my headlight was in the way of the travel agent, probably reducing stopping power a little bit); but because it doesn't look as clean and I was in search of something to put on my Christmas wish list, I decided to switch from the Tektro R200 to the V-brake compatible RL520. Installation was pretty easy, I didn't even have to re-wrap the handlebars. Will they deliver more stopping power? -- We'll see. Probably not as much as replacing the pads with Kool Stops would, but I want to run down this set of pads first. With the current weather conditions this shouldn't take long anyway...

The other thing to do was some maintenance. I've complained about salt damage before, and thus I decided to give Wolfgang a little TLC and clean his drivetrain. The good news: all the rust and grime comes off no problem. It takes several rounds of cleaning with citrus degreaser and the Park Tool CM-5 chain scrubber (no, not the Performance/Spin Doctor lookalike), but after that treatment the chain and cogs look pretty neat again. Until the next ride, of course.

Other maintenance: re-adjust rear fender to avoid rubbing.

Odo Wolfgang: 3117 km

Salt's bad for Wolfgang's health

One of the annoying side effects of riding your bike in the winter is the havoc wreaked by salt. I have full fenders, a mud flap, I'm relatively good in rinsing down Wolfgang more or less every day, but nonetheless the mix of salt, dirt, and grime gets everywhere on the bike and causes various kinds of problem. My chain, even though lubed frequently looks pretty rusty and a couple days ago I noticed that the right arm of my rear cantis no longer properly sprung back after braking and thus rubbed on the rim all the time. My initial repair attempts, involving no disassembly but a bunch of WD-40, were unsuccessful and so I had to take off the brake yesterday. I couldn't find instructions for completely taking apart the Tektro Oryx but I managed to disassemble the arm enough to get a bunch of oil into the right places. I would have preferred to take it apart completely and re-grease it, but at least for now the brake is functional again. I think in April I'll take a day or so and completely overhaul Wolfgang. So far I haven't noticed any permanent damage from the salt, but I'm sure cleaning everything and re-greasing the bottom bracket or hubs wouldn't be a bad idea after several months of calcium chloride showers.

On a completely unrelated note: I finally drank the Kool-Aid and ordered a Brooks B17 Imperial saddle. I don't really like the idea of riding on a dead cow's skin, but if the saddle is really as fantastic as almost everyone believes, I suppose I (and my butt) can live with it.

And on another unrelated note: my accomplice has a blog now, too. And I think it's supposed to be somewhat bike-related. So go check it out, non-existent reader!


Odo Wolfgang: 3016 km
Odo Gunnar: 45 minutes on the trainer