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...first, I am not here to cause a kerfuffle. Having said that, I bought myself one of those Hozan fixed cup tools, which work well. I paint a lot of my project frames, so it was worth the expense in my case.


Second, I disagree with the premise that fixed cups need to be removed, simply because you are servicing the BB.
Were that the case in standard shop practice, the cost for removing them would be factored in, and the rate would be higher.

Mostly, shops these days work on sealed units anyway. Once it goes in, it only comes out for replacement.

Here are the reasons I feel this way:

a. If the fixed cup is RH threaded (French, Italian), it has been intentionally torqued into place by a gorilla, in order to keep the drive side cup from backing out under use. Chances are excellent that unless you have a really good setup for fixed cups (like the Hozan tool), you won't get it back in place with the same torque. Thus it becomes a possible future problem.

b. If the purpose of this exercise is to remove and re-grease the threads, thus avoiding future problems, I would submit that the fixed cup is either pretty well stuck in there right now anyway, (in which case I don't envision it going from very difficult to remove to impossible to remove, before you actually need to remove it to replace it with something else.) Or it is not in there real tight. In which case you just did an extra operation for what seems to be no good reason (to me).

c. Even with that Hozan tool, sometimes I need to pull the bike off the stand, install the Hozan tool, insert the tool end in the jaws off a solid bench vise, and twist the frame off the cup and tool. Some of these fixed cups are not easily removed.

Anyway, everyone here has his own idea of proper....I would not at all fault someone for inspecting the condition of the fixed cup in place, (after through cleaning in place,) and then re-greasing and reassembling. You can use new bearings if you want, even thought the old ones are probably still good. Ball bearings are still pretty cheap and widely available.