Changing to sealed bottom bracket
 

This is the setup on my circa 1985 Fuji Espree. I know it has loose ball bearings which I want to change to sealed. I know I have a bad bearing or two as I get clicks and can feel movement in the crank when pedaling. It's a square taper crank.

Looking for help in buying required tools and a suggestion or part number on the sealed bracket and anything else I need to do this. I would also like to remove the rear wheel disk. Love this bike and put it together from a very poor shape when i got it, should i also look into changing the cranks to newer? This bike is a rider not a looker. Help!

http://i63.tinypic.com/2mchdp4.jpg

http://i64.tinypic.com/e652fs.jpg

http://i68.tinypic.com/2wevyte.jpg

List the Bike tools you already own..

1 set of tools to take it apart and a different tool to put the sealed cartridge bearing assembly in ..

Or just have the Bike shop do it then you don't have to buy all the tools ..

get a book on bike repairs too, you can borrow them from the public library.






....

Common, non-bike tools is what I own and I have a repair stand. I'm guessing crank puller and special cup wrenches?

read the repair books then you will know more ..

Thanks.......

Before replacing bottom bracket, I'd try replacing chain. A bad chain will give you the same bad clicks and bad feeling in the cranks/bottom bracket.
If it is the bottom bracket Fwiw, in My experience the loose ball bearings spin smother with less resistance. Provided your bb cups are not ruined I'd just replace the ball bearings. However a sealed BB is easy peasy to install. Good luck.

The RTFM, or RTFB as [MENTION=197614]fietsbob[/MENTION] is suggesting is not a bad idea. If you have not worked with BB's before there are some things about how you remove and adjust them that are hard to describe. Depending on the tools you already have and your ability to improvise, you might easily spend more on tools than the BB itself.

Looseness could be the crankarms themselves and not bearings. Have you checked that?

This link may be helpful in helping you to decide on which bottom bracket length you will need to replace your cup-and-cone one. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/bbsize.html You will also need to confirm your frame's bottom bracket threading.
The "rear wheel disc" is there to protect your spokes in case your chain shifts to the inside of the cassette, due to either mis-adjustment or from getting the rear derailleur betting bumped/bent. They are not fashionable, being derided as "dork discs" but they have saved me headaches in the past.

Changing to a sealed cartridge may require some trial and error fitting of different cartridges to find the right one. Some cartridges allow a degree of side-to-side adjustment to get the chainline right; others may not. If you can get the spindle out of the bottom bracket, your LBS may be able to find a suitable candidate cartridge.

OTOH, you may only need to repair the bottom bracket you currently have. Looseness suggests an adjustment problem, but if you've been riding for a while with loose adjustment, the spindle may be damaged. Again, if you can get the spindle out, your LBS should be able to match a replacement. Repack and adjust with new balls, and that may be all you need.

You will need some specialized tools to get the spindle out, and cups if you do end up going for a cartridge. A crank puller will get the arms off the spindle. A lockring wrench to remove the lockring on the adjustable cup. Depending on what type of adjustable cup you have, you may need a pin spanner to remove the adjustable cup, or something like the Park HCW-11, if you have that type of adjustable cup. The fixed cup can be problematic, but you only need to remove it if you're replacing the whole bottom bracket with a cartridge. Sheldon Brown describes a homemade tool that will remove almost any fixed cup, and has a good discussion on bottom brackets in general.

If you do use a sealed cartridge, you will need another special tool (exactly which one depends on which cartridge you use) to install the cartridge and possibly spacers to get the chainline right.

Thank you.

This is what I'd do before buying a new BB. I've never replaced a BB for worn bearings or cups. I've only done that due to changing to another crankset. Bearing cups might look bad because of some corrosion or pitting on the majority of it's surface that is not touched by the bearings, but that's okay. There is only a very fine thin circle where the bearings touch the cup. Same for the axle if you have that type BB. If that is not cracked or badly pitted, then re-adjust and ride.

Yes, BB spindles wear faster than the cups because the load runs on a smaller circumference. Worn BB spindles will have pits in the bearing track, e.g. the left bearing track on this spindle is quite pitted, the right is not:

http://www.os2.dhs.org/~john/riverview/mistral-3.jpg

So far every clicking and creaking noise I've encountered while pedaling was due to the chain rings.

On a couple of bikes, several times I've tightened a pesky chain ring bolt but without a proper chain ring nut wrench to hold the lock nut in place the same bolt would loosen within a few rides.

Last week I replaced the 42T smaller chain ring on my road bike with a new 39T ring. That gave me a chance to remove and clean up the bolts and lock nuts and contact surfaces. So far, so good. No more clicking or creaking.

I need to do the same with my hybrid's triple chain ring, although I don't plan to replace any of the rings -- just remove, clean up and return them to the original configuration.

A chainring nut wrench like the Park CNW-2 costs only $3-$6, and some new chainring sets come with the wrench. It's just a bit of sheet metal stamped to fit the narrow space between the back of the chainring and bike. Almost impossible to do without this specific but simple and inexpensive tool. I tried improvising on the road with a coin but it didn't fit properly and would pop out under pressure.

A look at a bottom bracket conversion..

How To Upgrade Vintage Bike With Sealed Cartridge Bottom Bracket

It might be cheaper for O.P. to take the bike to the LBS and get them to change the bottom bracket. As [MENTION=197614]fietsbob[/MENTION] noted, you'll probably need three special tools to do the job: crank puller, that notched hook tool to take out the old cups (of the correct size!), and the tool to thread in the new BB cups. Unless the old BB is frozen in and needs to sit in the corner of the shop for a month with daily drippings of penetrating oil, I wouldn't be surprised if the shop labor for installing a new BB comes out to less than the cost of all those tools.


Alternatively, the mechanic might find something else that's causing the clicking...

A starter kit like this will cover most of what you want to do. Quality is good, not super. but the tools work. Then if you do more wrenching, you can buy tools piece by piece and replace tools in here with better quality if you need to

$40

Nashbar Essential Tool Kit

http://media.nashbar.com/images/nash...ut-quality=100

Something is pretty loose if you feel movement while pedaling.

Have you tried:

- Moving the cranks forward and back against each other by hand? This would show loose crank- quite common.
- Spinning the crank by hand with chain removed? Rough or play shows worn or loose bottom bracket.
- Checking chainrings for damage or loose bolts?
- Checking the pedals are installed tightly & bearings are smooth?

If the crank is loose, it cannot be simply tightened.

Apologies if you've already addressed this stuff.

I agree with HillCusser. RJ the Bike Guy on youtube has some great videos showing how to service traditional bottom brackets. I recently serviced mine (didn't replace with a sealed one) buying a lock ring spanner and fixed cup wrench from park tool on Amazon. Took about an hour for me as a newbie to get it all apart, cleaned well, and put back together.

Best of luck!

...or not. My experiences here are dismal, in that the shop staff neither have the experience or time to properly service a cup and cone BB, so their natural inclination is to pull out all of the old and slap in a UN26 (or worse) cartridge unit. For $50 and add another $50 in shop time.

Then there will be about a 25% chance that the spindle length of the new unit is correct, leading to problems with the chainline and the operation of the front derailleur.

The shop is highly motivated to use existing inventory, meaning that they'll likely install a unit meant for a triple MTB crankset, resulting in your crankarms sitting a full cm too far outboard on each side.

Properly servicing your existing loose-ball unit will be far cheaper than a replacement. I have overhauled hundreds of old BB's, and I have only seen a very small number that were so profoundly neglected that they couldn't be revivived with $5 worth of new balls and some fresh grease. Perhaps a new spindle as well in the extreme cases... add another $5-10.