Praxis Works Campagnolo BB30 Adapter – silence at last

I bought a new Bianchi Sempre

I bought a new Bianchi Sempre Pro frame in the end of summer sales, before realising that it had the dreaded BB30 press fit bottom bracket. I wasn’t going to put myself through the torment of a creaking BB so purchased a Campy-compatible Praxis Works BB30 conversion kit for £59 from GB Cycles. It came with a plastic sleeve for PF30s, which I put aside, and I got my bottom bracket press ready.

The easy part is putting in the left press-fit sleeve. Then you have to screw the right hand (drive) side cup into the left hand sleeve to expand the collet tightly into the BB30 shell. This started fine and easily achieved with two BB tools, until the collet started to expand into the Bianchi’s heavy gauge aluminium BB shell. Tightening to the required tolerance – so that the crank halves could be torqued to the required torque without binding on the Praxis cups – required huge amounts of effort, a continuous torque of about 60Nm, according to my torque wrench. Praxis’s very good instructions say not to compress the rubber O-ring on the left, but by the time I could fit the crank halves without the crank binding on the Praxis BB cups, the O-ring was fairly compressed.
I suppose the Bianchi BB shell may have been slightly wider than specification, but it was worrying to have to tighten the Praxis Works so hard – so tight in fact, that I had to use the BB press to stop the BB tool coming off the end of the BB.

Once fitted, and 100 miles under the belt, there have been no noises at all, but I was left wondering whether this kit is the final answer. It felt wrong to be expanding alloy into alloy so hard, and I felt that it could easily have distorted the original BB shell if I’d gone further. So, it’s a qualified succes: No creaks, but at what cost to the frame?

Oh, and no luck if you want to use Super Record, or Veloce, because Praxis don’t make the adaptors you need for them.

No BB30 ever,ever,ever for
No BB30 ever,ever,ever for me… u-ee, u-ee, eee-u (kicks frame)(mutters swear words in swahili)

benezeir wrote: I think BB30

benezeir wrote:

I think BB30 is great, super stiff and light, dead simple and easy to service.

We’ve clearly not been using the same BB30. How is BB30 simple and easy to service compared to a good ‘old fashioned’ threaded bottom bracket? Last I used it, I needed a drift and a mallet to remove, and an expensive bearing press to install if I wanted to avoid creaks. That and having to use tons of loctite.

None of this is necessary with threaded.

As others have said, BB30 was as much about reducing frame manufacturing costs as anything else. No threads to drill and face. It’s interesting that some premium brands (Pinerello springs to mind on the F8 and Dogma) still choose to stick with threaded on their flagship frames, even with all the supposed benefits of pressfit systems like BB30.

BB30 was designed by a
BB30 was designed by a company called Magic Motorcycle – a specialist, small scale machining company, needing high-tolerance. It simply wasn’t designed for large scale manufacture and sloppy tolerances. Cannondale bought Magic Motorcycle and inflicted creaking-hell on the unsuspecting. It’s made worse due to the bearings sitting directly in the BB shell – water spray enters down the seat-tube and kills the bearings. Worse still is putting BB30 on CX bikes and MTBs – there’s good reason why Shimano won’t go near it.

I’ve got a shimano Praxis
I’ve got a shimano Praxis Works BB30 adaptor, and it’s really good isn’t it? Not sure why I bought a BB30 frame in the first place, but there we go.
BB30 seems to be a standard dreamt up by the frame manufacturers mainly because it’s cheaper and easier for them to build. I’m skeptical there’s much in the way of stiffness gains – that would be more to do with the amount of frame surrounding the BB30/GPX/etc shell I think.