Fed up of pressfit bottom brackets? Find out if something better is on the way

Somebody mentioned Hambini earlier. Here's his blog post on pressfit bottom brackets:

https://www.hambini.com/blog/post/bottom-bracket-pressfit-and-creaking-an-engineering-opinion/

Particularly interesting is the graph showing the manufacturing accuracy of various frames that he's measured. (Poor accuracy equals creaking...)

All of my bikes are PF BB. I have had issues, but solved them all.

1. Felt F65x cross bike, aluminium frame with BB30. The issue I had was premature wearing out of the bearings. I use it as my winter bike with full mudguards and flaps, so have done my best to prevent road spray enveloping the BB area constantly. However, the bearings just press into the frame and are completely exposed to the elements from the outside, and also internally - they rely solely on the bearing seals. Tried different brands of bearing all to no avail, they would get rumbly after a few thousand winter miles.

Swapped group sets from SRAM to new 105 which also meant the crank spindle went from 30mm to 24mm. Fitted a Praxis Works sleeved BB converter which tightens into the shell and expands to grip really tightly. No creaks and the sleeve offers much more protection from the elements. Two winters in and so far, so good.

2. I own two Colnagos with their pressfit solution - Threadfit 82.5mm. As others posted when this article first appeared, this seems like a pretty good solution for pressfit. Both bikes have Rotor 3d+ 30mm cranks but the PF4130 bearings suffered the same issues as the Felt BB - simply pressed into the cups and left exposed to the elements. One did develop a creak which was the bearings themselves. Solution was to fit CBear sleeved BBs which are an incredibly tight press fit (lots of creaks and cracks as you press them in!) but they are faultless and incredibly smooth.

The only other annoying creak I’ve suffered and spent forever trying to trace turned out to be the rear cassette which was freaking due to not being tight enough! It had been done up to the specified torque, which wasn’t enough. Lesson learned and logged for future reference...

PP

Never had an issue with BB86 shells, Shimano BB bearings, and Shimano 24mm spindle cranks.  And the BB86 standard offers greater potential tire clearance at the BB area than any of the other common standards. The shell width allows you to mount the chainstays wider than BSA/BB30/PF30/T47, and the smaller shell diamater allows more tire diameter clearance potential for a given chainstay length than a BB386EVO.  

Trek's BB90 has even greater clearance potential. Unfortunately, the actual implementation is suboptimal.    

I think some of the issue with BB30/PF30 is that the bearings are too close to the bb centerline, adding more leverage to the adverse radial forces from the spindle.  This would seem to explain why BB386EVO seems to be less prone to creaking and wear issues.  

In my experience, press fit bottom brackets are a complete crock of shit.

My personal experiance with press fit has been ok to be honest. I have the BB386EVO on my Cipollini to which I did get some creaking but turned out it was chainring bolts. With my Open U.P I have one of the 'screw type' press fit BB's and have had no issues either, so far and thats over 2 years now, apart from replacing the bearings.

I had a 2011 Cannondale SuperSix, which was an absolute joy to ride apart from a persistently creaking BB. I first tried cleaning the BB30 bearings, and re-fitting with grease or loctite; then I fitted a threaded sleeve which enabled me to use threaded external BB cups; finally I tried a Praxis GXP adaptor, one side of which was pressed into the BB shell, with the other side screwing into a thread in the pressed-in side. None of these efforts ameliorated the horrible creaking from the bottom bracket area, and as a result of all these efforts I came to appreciate the virtues of a simple threaded BB shell. I finally gave up on the SuperSix frame, purchased a secondhand Planet-X RT-80 frame (with threaded BB shell), built it up with the parts from the Cannondale and have enjoyed creak-free pedalling ever since.

I've had 3 cannondale and they all creak, they are arrogant in extremis thinking they know better than other bike manufacturers. I love innovation but when even they can't make their own BB design standard work they should give up. I'm going to give hambini a call to sort my Felt cx bike (BB30) and my supersix evo (PF30A). He's the only solution that will guarantee a creak free BB and he's accountable. We wouldn't need Guys like hambini if bike manufacturers and designers did a decent job. SRAM bbs are shite but a bog standard Shimano screw in BB lasts and is quiet and cheap to replace. Sorted.

The problem isn't press-fit bottom brackets per se - the engineering is well proven and widely used - it's the god awful build quality of some frames. In order to make bigger profits and maximise returns for their shareholders, cynical manufacturers like Cannondale and Cervelo (and several others) charge astronomical prices for some of their bikes and framesets, while marketing them like they were the peak of design and engineering excellence.

The press-fit bottom bracket shit-show is indicative of a bike industry that's fast turning into an enormous consumer rip-off.

Slight sense in your closing paragraphs there David that you're  blaming the consumer while defending an industry that so often calls the editorial shots. It's likely that the versions of the bikes the pros use, particularly the biggest names, get specially built and thoroughly checked versions of the production frames that the average punters end up with. Also, bear in mind pro riders rarely use their sponsor's bikes beyond a season.

The problem is plain to see: too many of these so-called high-end bikes (let alone the cheaper end!) are produced in low-cost facilities by low-paid and relatively low-skilled workers. Precisely made, light, stiff, comfortable frames have always been difficult and expensive to build, whatever they're made of. What's going on here with press-fit BBs is a symptom of an industry that has been making huge amounts of money at the expense of the quality of their often massively over-hyped bikes.

"Knock knock"
"Who's there? No don't tell me, press fit BB?"

Press Fit is still here after 2 years, and so is this article 

I prefer traditional square taper BBS. They last for years without needing changed. 

The reason so many Cdale frames have problems with creaking, clicking from the BB yet others do not is that many of the Cdal frames are crap.  Not becasue of the BB30 system.  I have owned and ridden a tremendous number of bikes as I owned a business buying and selling high end road bikes (and my own personal compulsion to ride neat stuff).   I have seen BB30 bikes work just fine.  But Cdale and some other manufacturers just don't hold tight enough tolerences to make it work well.  Go to YouTube and watch videos by a fellow named Habini (might not be right spelling) he is a real engineer and call BS on bike industry practices.  

No one ever needed a BB30 BB...   nor do they need T37.   This is all a bunch of marketing hooey.  Go buy a custom, ti or steel frame with a threaded BB and ride like you stole it.  You will not be slower becasue of it.  Heck, you will probably be faster becasue you will ride more becasue you won't be working on your bike and becasue it will fit better.  

Just wondering how the Italian brands and now Specialized bond a threaded shell for BBR60 to carbon frame.  That never seems to be mentioned, but must be reliable as no one seems to mention failures with Italian bikes. 

Also, one supposed advantage of Press-Fit is a larger diameter BB and thus stiffer frame.  Probably not significant for most, but wondering how they achieve same frame stiffness if using smaller bottom bracket tube?

Glad to see there are domestic options like the Roubaix now avaiable.

I love my BB30 bottom brackets. The bearings are proprietary and cheap as chips. Replacement takes minutes and I’ve never had a creak in either carbon or aluminium frames from them.

My alloy Ribble creaked constantly. Isolated it to the BB, swapped the BB out, creak came back within weeks. I've since redeployed the creaky BB into a 1983 Carlton frame, with zero creak. I suspect the creaks are alloy frame related and not BB related as all 3 of my alloy frames have creaked and groaned. I replaced the Ribble with a box full of parts and put the frame in the bin.

Carbon fiber doesn't take threads.  You have to glue and/or press something into it.  That's just a fact.  The question is just how well it's all done.

"Cannondale developed the BB30 bottom bracket in 2006"

Actually they made it turn of the millennium with their SI system...and it worked fine because the frames, BB, and crankset were all made by the same company. It's when the BB30 concept went open market did things go to shit because tolerance went out the window.

I can thoroughly recommend the Praxis BB shell conversion for Specialized PF30 to allow use with Shimano cranks - works perfectly, silent and easy to fit. 

Alternatively I have also experienced no problems with the larger axle S-works crankset with the same BB, but had terrible creaking issues with the conversion from BB30 to shimano - i think this is where the problem often lies. 

Threaded BBs are easier to fit and replace (and pretty much priced as a disposable item, so good on a cross bike where they might only last a wet season) but I've got a couple of bikes with PF BBs and they have been fit and forget. I've had no creaks with the Hope BB, which has a threaded sleeve. Given the number of manufacturers offering these in the after market (e.g., Praxis, Wheels MFG), I rather thought that this (threaded) solution would have become ubiquitous by now but it doesn't seem to have as Shimano and SRAM continue to offer only conventional press fit. On the other hand, I've also had no problems (or noise) from a cheap plastic Shimano PF BB on a MTB, so maybe its down to individual frame tolerances.

A bit of history here to maybe add to the discussion (or throw a spanner in the works).

For most of my working life I was involved in frame & bike manufacturing, working in the UK, Far-East, Italy and other places.

I’ve seen trends come & go; sat back and watched new designs first fêted then slated, watched other perfectly acceptable solutions dropped and buried in pursuit of the next big thing.

I’ve also did a fair bit of mechanicking and spent many a day/week trying to track down and eliminate phantom knocks, creaks and rattles. Along the way I’ve been fortunate to work with some superb framebuilders and mechanics who steered me in the right direction and kept me from veering off down dead-ends.

The first thing I’ll say is this; bottom brackets and bracket shells get a bad rap.

They get blamed for everything, regardless of size, shape or standard.  A bad rap because a lot of the time the fault lies elsewhere.  Even the much-lauded threaded BB can end up under attack from a rider or mechanic too inexperienced, indifferent or adventurous to fully investigate.

Here's one example.

In the early 80’s, I worked for a major retailer in Central London who also produced own-label stuff.  One of their bikes came back not long after delivery with a creaking bracket. The BB cups and bearings were duly replaced. The creak stayed.  Another was fitted, everything double-checked and the bike went back on the road. Next day the bike was back. This time, new cranks, chainrings and bolts were fitted with everything disassembled and reassembled with a good coating of locking compound and/or grease where appropriate. Still no joy; the creak remained.

Eventually, after a few more failed remedial solutions, the wheels were swapped out. The creak remained but this time sounded different. This led to discovering  the real culprit, the freewheel (ask yer granny). The creak was coming from a poorly machined sprocket, but anyone and everyone who inspected that bike would swear the creak was coming from the BB.

Lesson learned; sound will travel along tubes and be echoed and amplified in the BB shell.

I’ve come across a similar example where the culprit was a poorly fitted headset cup, but the BB was initially blamed.

When the whole TIG-welded alloy frame thing gathered steam in the late ‘80’s, it was first welcomed because of the favourable weight and stiffness properties of oversize alu frames.

But mechanics were soon finding out they came with unexpected baggage, in the form of creaky BB’s.

Back then, BB’s were threaded across the board, regardless of metal or material.

Frames were, for the large part, manufactured in the far-east, but there was still plenty of European sources in those days. At first, mass production/poor tolerances were seen as the culprits, but frames made in Italy or USA would creak just as bad as those from Taiwan.

Poor machining was blamed for a while, but didn’t really solve anything because the first thing a good mechanic would do was clear/align threads and face shells when trying to sort things out. Again, a lot of the time, creaks were appearing to be in the BB due to the echo-chamber effect of noise travelling along tubes. But behind it all was another reason still not really acknowledged today. This goes back to the initial frame manufacturing.

One thing you don’t really get with lugged frames is tube-on tube friction. It happens all the time on lugless frames. Traditional framebuilders knew about it way back in the day when building steel lugless frames (Americanized to ‘fillet-brazed’) and the good ones knew how to do something about it. But this knowledge really didn’t filter through to the production runs in the far-east, southern Europe or USA.

Likewise, the same wisdom is largely lost to the latest generation of ‘learn-as-you-go, worry-about-it-later’ framebuilders who’ve cropped up in the last 10-15 years. Perhaps this is due to the fact the full apprenticeship is a thing of last century.  It could be that the knowledge/experience/wisdom pool has dried up. It’s probably not helped by the internet/social media-driven ‘want-it-all, want-it-now’ mindset so prevalent in clickbait-friendly microbrands.

So whether the frame is coming out the gates of a 50000- frames-per-annum factory or from a 5-a-year shed makes no difference. If you don’t get it right at the earliest stages of the frame being built, down the line the bike will be a creaker.  Alu, steel or composite frames are all susceptible to this and its something that won’t go away overnight or by adding or removing threads to a bracket shell or designing ‘new’ standards.

There’s a solution, but it means looking backward instead of forward.  It would be pretty much impossible to implement & activate other than tracking down or digging up some post-war, pre-millennium South London framebuilders and sending them to China on some kind of evangelistic framebuilding missionary work.

Very difficult, very unlikely.  

So for the large part, creaks are here to stay,  like it or not.  They might change tone or note, but they're going nowhere. 

BTW, apologies for the length of this post - - - blame the morning coffee!