Praxis Works Campagnolo BB30 Adapter - silence at last

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 probs with BB30 here, though am running ceramic bearings, but don't know if that is significant factor. Thought I had a creak for a while, but turned out to be pedal axles. Have had more probs with external cups getting crap in and bearings rusting.

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

I don't think I'd ever buy a BB30-equipped bike again. It might be great in warmer climes but British roads can render it a noisy irritating load of bollocks.

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 converted my bike to sram adaptor for external bearings because of creaking. This has stopped the creaking. A similar idea to Praxis with the facility to change the bearings only. If my problem comes back in the future I will try the praxis bb30 shimano adaptor

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.

I've been running a BB30 frame with Campagnolo for a few years now, but with an FSA K-force light BB386evo chainset - absolutely no problems. I think BB30 is great, super stiff and light, dead simple and easy to service.