The old cup-and-cone bottom brackets were great when I was a student with more time than money. Back then, I enjoyed working on bottom brackets. But it never made sense from a monetary perspective. Even at $ 7 an hour, overhauling my BB twice a year was $ 14 in time alone. If the BB lasts 10 years, I've spent $ 140 of my time. And the cup-and-cone BB wasn't cheap - I recall a Campy BB costing (back then) $ 80. In today's dollars, that would be more than an SKF BB.
These days, I am terribly busy, and I prefer riding my bike over working on it. That is why money spent on components that I never have to think about is money well spent. All too often does it happen on Bicycle Quarterly test bikes that the night before a big ride, I discover a problem and have to scramble to fix it. And these are new bikes! As to BB weight, there isn't much you can do. Yes, you can replace the spindle with titanium, but remember that titanium is much less strong than steel. And when BB spindles were originally designed, the engineers who designed them weren't stupid. They made them as big as they need to be, using very strong CrMo steel. Even a stainless spindle will be less strong. Replacing a CrMo part with an identically dimensioned titanium part invites trouble. You could design a BB with a titanium spindle, but you'd have to start from scratch. You'd make the bottom bracket shell of the bike bigger to make room for the bigger spindle. You'd make the crank bigger, too, so the bigger spindle fits. The end result probably would be heavier than what you started with. There is a way around this, by using a lighter material for the cranks, too. That is why carbon cranks make sense only with modern BBs and vice versa. (The original Campy carbon cranks with a square taper were heavier than our René Herse aluminum cranks!) The carbon cranks actually aren't lighter than aluminum ones, but the BB is lighter, so overall, you save weight. However, much of the savings come from the tiny bearings, which you need to replace annually on most models. I am a lightweight rider, and I don't tend to break components, so I sometimes am tempted by a titanium spindle. Then I think of the consequences if it breaks (almost certain to crash), and I realize that it's not worth the risk. It's interesting to note that none of the titanium BBs are made by companies who have their components fatigue-tested to the universally accepted industry standards. Disclosure: Compass Bicycles Ltd. sell SKF bottom brackets. Jan Heine Compass Bicycles Ltd. www.compasscycle.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
