Originally Posted by
CerveloMad
Just a quick update Campag, to let you know that I gave up on my attempted warranty claim for my son's Scott Foil 20 frame due to the wallowing out of the BB shell. It just wasn't worth all the aggro, as I knew I was up against it being the second owner and wasn't getting any real support either from the previous owner. I had a one time reply from her saying that her Team Manager recommended wrapping plumbers tape around the bearing, he does it all the time!!
Yeh right.......I went ahead instead as you had kindly advised and used epoxy to secure the new bearing in place and everything went very smoothly. For some reason though, I had great difficulty in trying to purchase the Scotch Weld DP420 here in the UK as you advised, so after long discussions with the Scotch Weld dealer opted for the DP490 Black, which was in stock and immediately available for delivery. Performance was almost exactly the same, but work life was longer at 180 minutes, which meant less of a concern applying, but on the negative side, has a cure time of 7 days as opposed to the 1 day of the DP420. This however was no problem to me personally and quite happy to accept this. Anyway, just thought I would let you know that all your efforts in helping on this Forum does not go unnoticed and taken for granted. I appreciate very much your help and without it I wouldn't have known which way to turn. Thank you once again.
Piccy of the bike attached, with its upgrade to internal Di2 and new Mavic 40c Carbone clinchers(Wheel decals are black gloss..they are yellow from the flash!)
A nice post and good to hear from you CerveloMad. Because of the multitude of Scott BB wear issues, it must be something about the carbon fiber that Scott uses...or the BB hole is oversized from the start which promotes movement from the first pedal stroke of ownership and wear continues from there. As discussed Specialized over the years suffered from lack of good press on their PF30 and related creaking and dissatisfied customers and why ended up spec'ing the epoxy proposed as resolution. For 2015 after several years with the PF30 design not unlike what you have in your wider shell Scott, Spesh ultimately discontinued the virgin carbon shell BB design that has this issue and now just produce common BB30 with insert molded alloy cups which don't have the same tendency or secondary interface to control. With BB30, Loctite the bearings to the alloy cups bonded in the frame when produced and no movement or worries.
The suggestion of plumber's tape simply shows the mentality of people you are dealing with. Disappointing and exposes the worst in company support of its customers. For Scott to concede there is an issue which there clearly is, would open the floodgate of warranty returns or more appropriately a recall which would reduce the companies' profits but the flipside is you likely won't buy another Scott frameset. I wouldn't. With the known specification of epoxy by top selling Specialized for basically the same BB design, its beyond irresponsible that Scott doesn't endorse its bike shops to repair your son's bike with the procedure you ultimately borrowed from Specialized as resolution. Btw, as you likely know, what you performed isn't just a kluge. It will be reliable over time. Let's say you wear another BB out or two or three more. Just knock the bearing/bushings out and the epoxy left that filled the gapping and lack of press will create a pristine hole and then re-epoxy a replacement BB back in place. The shear force which is purely horizontal by knocking out the bushing/bearings will leave a perfect pattern of the mating bushing which is a nice round hole...in effect restoring the BB shell to original condition. This is because acytel bushings used to capture metal bearings is less bonded to the epoxy than the epoxy is to the carbon fiber by virtue of polymer chemistry and surface properties..the latter adhering tenaciously. This procedure can be repeated for the life of the frameset without any downside.
Thank you for coming back and sharing your success.