Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Italian Threaded BB's loosening themselves?

Do Italian threaded BB's tend to work themselves loose faster due to the threading?

I was doing the Montauk Century yesterday and looked down and noticed my bottom bracket had worked itself loose. Of course I didn't bring a crank puller or a bottom bracket tool with me so I had to sort of baby it for 40 miles till I found a bike shop. I must have not tightened it down well when I first assembled the bike a few weeks ago but I've never seen this happen before.

I have heard of this but it has yet to happen to me. I do use a tourque wrench to tighten my BB and there is an incredible amount of force putting one of those in.

happened to me twice before i took the time to apply the proper tools to the job and really cranked it down.

Those wacky italians!

you might have better luck asking this in the bicycle mechanics forum

the left side, fixed cup on italian BBs is right threaded, which means when you pedal, you're applying a forward, unscrewing force to it.

they tend to come loose with usage. use loc-tite on italian left cups.

english threaded BBs fixed this by reversing the threading on the left side. the pedaling motion pushes both sides tighter.

yea. old school italian threading is stupid.
as brunning said, it works itself off.
So what I do on the fixed cup side is use locktite.
also, go to your LBS, they have a tool that allows you to lock the wrench so it doesn't slip. From that they can use a mallet to really reef on the cup so its for sure not going to work itself loose.

sorry for my craptastic explanation. but yea, I totally know what your talking about. Just bring it to a competent LBS and they'll make sure it won't unthread itself.;

Mmmhmm. happens. My campagnolo one used to unscrew a lot. Eventually i got tired of stopping to screw it in by hand.

(big) +1 for the loctite. Enough to hold it in, but you can still wrench it out when the time comes..

I had the same problem on my Bianchi but curiously it was the drive side cup that worked free all the time. Loctite applied and no more problem.

yea, it would be the driveside.

the fact that i havec a campy bb on a bianchi and this has never happened to me makes me nervous. ah, well.

the fact that i havec a campy bb on a bianchi and this has never happened to me makes me nervous. ah, well.

That's likely because Bianchi has used english treading since sometime in the 80's give or take a couple of years...

the left side, fixed cup on italian BBs is right threaded, which means when you pedal, you're applying a forward, unscrewing force to it.

they tend to come loose with usage. use loc-tite on italian left cups.

english threaded BBs fixed this by reversing the threading on the left side. the pedaling motion pushes both sides tighter.
would a left side drivetrain alievate the unscrewing? would it cause more issues?

The drive side on my Bianchi started unthreading after I switched to a sealed BB. Blue loctite has mostly been working. I noticed it was a few mm out after several hundred miles a few days ago. I need to be switching over to a campy taper BB soon anyways, so hopefully that puts it right again... I think it might have been partially user error, maybe stripping the threads a bit, since I never had problems before putting the sealed Shimano in...

For whatever that's worth...

would a left side drivetrain alievate the unscrewing? would it cause more issues?
If you only pedal backwards, it will prevent the non-drive side from unscrewing. But then the non-drive side would unscrew.

What side the chain is on makes no difference.