Hi folks,...
Bought a brand new but sloppily put together Onyx/Kent "High Tide" 29"er... Tire wasn't properly seated.. fender bolt hole stripped.. a few other things looked like it would need a bit of attention so I forked-over the $80+tx AS IS. Get it to the house and remove all fenders and the chain guard. Had to take it to the local bike shop as I didn't have the proper tool to remove the crank arm so that the guard mounting plate could be removed thereby finishing my "quick customization". Shop guy later informs me that the bottom bracket threads were stripped as it had been cross threaded at assembly,... he said it probably wouldn't hold together long and it didn't ... one short 10 block trip and that was it. Did a quick YouTube search and came up with bikeman4U's replacing the threaded cartridge with a threadless vid. (Thanks guy!) So the question... I don't have the tools of course to remove the crank arms and the cartridge. Does anyone on the forum have any experience with these Genesis Onyx/HighTide bikes as to know what size cartridge they use?.. Thanks for your time

It's almost certain to be English threaded, so there's your bottom-bracket-to-frame interface. The other thing you'll need to know is the spindle length, which is determined by your crankset. You'll likely have to remove both crank arms and measure.

...but a decent threadless bottom bracket that doesn't require chamfering the bottom bracket shell will probably cost you around $60. (The Velo Orange Grand Cru threadless bottom bracket would be a safe choice.) Add labor and/or tools and you're quickly spending more on the repair than you did on the bike.

There are cheap threadless bottom brackets out there like the ones by Sunlite or YST, but you're supposed to chamfer the edge of the bottom bracket shell to get those seated properly.

If you want to attempt a low cost fix, you might consider trying a heavy duty retaining compound like Loctite 609 to secure the stripped cup in place. Especially if it's the fixed cup (same side as the chainring) since you won't have to remove that one to adjust or service the bottom bracket. Will it hold? I don't know. But at least you're not throwing money at a bike that may not be worth high repair costs.

I just replaced my bottom bracket. It was a terrible pain to find info on which size was needed.

I ended up putting a Shimano UN55 (68x118) in and it works. The bottom bracket that came out was 68x120 which means now the crank arms are in just the slightest. I would order a 120 next time I have to do the job.

1mm per side shouldn't be a problem. Why couldn't you measure the spindle before you started looking for a replacement?

The 2mm is really no big deal. I could have measured before ordering one sure, but my luck, something would have broken.

If I didn’t remove the crank and chain guard, I’m not sure if I could have measured the spindle with my caliper.

Hard to find info on this bike, I just want to make sure that I can get more info out there.