The old school internal bearing square taper BB was pretty smooth. When things went to external bearings, the friction actually went up.
I never heard anyone saying darn, these friggin external bearing bb's have so much drag its slowing me down.
Now external bearing BB's with ceramic bearings get you about back to where things were with internal bearing square taper steel bearing BB's. And suddenly the ceramic bearings are dramatically increasing speed?
By the way, the data behind this post IIRC comes from some Zinn testing in Velonews.
EDIT: Did a search for the Zinn data, and only found a few other references from others who also read the article in the magazine. Apparently, it wasn't in Velonews' on line content. (or I'm overlooking it in a quick search.)
Last edited by merlinextraligh; 05-20-08 at 09:30 AM.