I volunteer at a co-op in Seattle. Last night a fellow came in with a bike that had a very sloppy Ashtabula crank. I figured that one of the bearing cages had broken up. I asked him if it were an old bike and he said he had put maybe 5000 miles on it. Anyway, after a bit of struggling and penetrating oil we got the crank locknut off and were able to remove the crank. Sure enough, the bearing cage had broken into several parts. When I looked into the BB shell, I saw no signs of grease whatever. Lots of dirt ground in to the bearing races though!

I sent the guy off to a local bike shop to get a couple Ashtabula bearing sets and cleaned out the races. When he came back, we put the crank back together as best we could. I think the fellow had ridden the bike with the loose crank, because the threads on the drive side race had stripped. But even so, I was able to get the crank working all right.

I then told the fellow that we should check the other bearings for grease and proper adjustment. I popped the front wheel out, and then took out the bar stem and found copious rust. The headset bearings were ok, with at least a little grease. I added more grease and reassembled, then greased the stem and put it back in.

While the front wheel was out, I spun it and found that it was grinding terribly. I pulled the axle and again found a smidge of grease, but no damage. It was just a very poor adjustment. After I reset it to my liking, we tried to get the wheel back into the forks. Nothing doing. The fork was a good 1/8” too narrow for the wheel to fit. We tried pulling on both fork legs to no avail. So I pulled out an old axle, put a couple nuts on the middle of it, and proceeded to cold set the fork legs outward.

That was successful, and all in attendance were admiring my skill and knowledge (a crowd had come to watch the disaster.) I figured I would adjust the brake next, and in testing the brake I saw that the brake cable was frayed at the lever.

It took me a good ten minutes to untangle the frayed brake cable from the lever, housing, and cable fixing bolt.

Anyway, I threaded in a new cable, adjusted it all, and spun the wheel. Of course the wheel was out of true and the brake grabbed at one spot. No big deal, I will just pull the wheel again and true it. Should have thought of that when I had the wheel out the first time, right. Annnnd . . . As I spotted the place where it was out of true, I saw that the rim was bulging badly and in fact was cracked.

I gave up. Told the guy to go find a used wheel and come back.

Isn't 5,000 miles about ten times the expected life of a BSO?

I've had days like that, getting multiple little details squared away on something then find them all for naught as another issue trumps them all .... thankfully mine were in the privacy of my own garage. Though it's great you can get over those frustrations and stay motivated to volunteer and help others.

There are some bikes/machines like that, you fix a problem and 2 new ones arise... I guess it would be wiser not to start trying to fix them in the first place, but I for one don't like to throw away bikes.

More than once, I have disassembled Ashtabula cranks that have been in use for a while to find the entire bearing assembly bright and sparkling with no sign there was ever a drop of grease anywhere near them. The most recent was a trike I serviced last year for a 92 year old man.

Those Ashtabula assemblies are the antithesis of sealed bearings, with gaps between the cups and the shell no matter how well you adjust it. I was not surprised to see how much dirt had collected in my customer’s BB shell.

Just so. I have found, despite their crude (by modern standards) design, they are by a wide margin one of the most dependable systems. They take abuse like no lube or poor adjustment and laugh at it. I have seen the crank fracture at the threading, though.

Must be those 3/8 bearings.

Bingo! the award goes to wschruba. As the rolling elements radius grows so too does the load capacity, as I was told the increase is geometric with radius.


So take a look at most all current bearing designs and note the tiny rolling elements sizes. Driven by the need for aero or integration bearings are becoming a secondary aspect, no longer is long bearing life the positive it use to be. Now it's about how little the bearing impacts other design aspects.


One piece cranks were made in an era when tolerances were vastly looser, bikes cost far more of one's yearly income and repairing stuff was wideplace. They filled their goals well. Andy

sounds like a normal day at a burning man bike shop.

We got 2 ashtabula cranks with disintegrated bearings in 2016. In 2017 we got 10 with the same problem.

At the bike exchange I am always taking a bike to fix that looks like it doesn't need much and 6 hours later have replaced a wheel , the rear derailleur, regreased the bearings, changed a tire, and who knows what else.

Last saturday I was working on a Schwinn Varsity. It had a new rear wheel installed. I replaced the old Schwinn derailleur for a nice Suntour unit and couldn't get it to shift onto the large rear cog. Turns out the wheel that was on there was dished wrong and was the problem. Went into the shop and pulled down another wheel with a 5 speed freewheel on it and installed it. Everything worked fine.

This story sounds familiar....