"The hard, cheap, Indian threading way, using Vise Grips for the lockring and a nail and hammer for the cup" is one of the most fantastic descriptions of anything I've ever read. Good point about Ashtabula cranks. A guy came by the other day with one of those, and of course it was on a ten-year old hundred-dollar (today's dollars) bike, but it was pared down to nothing, not an unnecessary molecule of metal on it, and ... I though wow, kind of neat. Bigger and more bearings inside would be good, but has anybody ever ridden one of these guys to destruction? No need to start a kickstarter campaign to bring back the bad-ol' Ashtabula, but ... they are no laughing stocks.
On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 7:52 AM, Patrick Moore <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote: > I learned to adjust left-side cups the hard way, cheap, Indian threading, > using Vise Grips for the lockring and a nail and hammer for the cup. But I > did get them adjusted. > > Interesting, at least the older British Racing Tricycles use leftside bb > cups and lockrings at each inside end to adjust bearing play on the axle > stubs. That's awkward, because you can't get in front of the assembly > face-on, as you can with a bottom bracket. > > As for longevity: I hear that Campy and perhaps old Dura Ace cup and cone > bb assemblies last as long as anything else out there? I do know that I've > ridden at least 2 Phils in heavy rain and grit and, in one case, even > submerged one in 2' of water, with no problems. But I too would probably > choose a SKS for really heavy duty use. > > My vote for the best value-for-money crank/bb bearing assembly type is the > Ashtabula; I wonder if these could be refined and lightened? Carbon fiber? > But, in any event, they seem indestructible, even after riding through > streams and watching muddy water flow out upon emerging. > > On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Grant Petersen <grant6...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> >> >> The final adjustment takes some skill and time and experience and feel, >> which is why nobody uses these as original equiment anymore. It cannot be >> done with power tools, and you don't want a first-timer adjusting your bb. >> Any conscientious individual can do it just fine, but it'll take many tries >> and retries to nail the adjustment, because as you tighten the lockring >> against the shell, it has the effect of pulling out (loosening) the >> adjustment. So, you get what seems like a perfect adjustment, then you go >> to lock it in and it loosens, and it loosens because the adjustable cup >> gets pulled outward, away from the bearings. >> >> The skill and feel come in by knowing how too-tight to make it to account >> for the loosening, and different bottom brackets and frames will require >> different amounts. You sometimes try to hold the adjustable cup's >> adjustment with the pin tool as you lock it there with the lockring, but >> sometimes tightening the lockring makes the adjustable cup move, anyway. >> It's the opposite of Plug-n-Play, but the thing is, it is NOT THAT HARD as >> long as you don't require perfection on your first-thru-fourth tries. As a >> home mechanic, you need to buy some tools. The fixed cup should be put in >> with a shop tool, and new bike shops might not even have those anymore. The >> cheap tools are the lockring tool and pin tool, and in the old days you >> could get them both for $30 combined, but I don't know what it is these >> days, and a normal bike shop won't stock them. >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rbw-owners-bunch/uQgg6v9B0tk/unsubscribe > . > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. > -- 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.
