Unusual bottom bracket identification
 

Hi. I'm a reasonably competent DIY bike repairer. One of the family's bike needs it's bottom bracket replacing but the type is like nothing I've seen before. The bike is a Ridgeback mountain bike which was new in approx mid-2000s. I presume it is the original bottom bracket. After extensive searching on the internet I've found nothing that looks like it. Unfortunately this post is a bit hamstrung by the fact that as a newbie I'm not allowed to post pictures. So I'll attempt to describe it.

The axle appears to be fairly standard tapered square. But instead of the usual internal splines to unscrew the housing there is an inlaid pattern which looks like it would fit a tool with 6 square shaped lugs. There is no makers name visible on the bracket.

Does anyone have any idea what make this bracket is or the tool that would remove it? I'm out of ideas short of making my own tool to fit.

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

This would probably be a good place to start for ID.
https://www.parktool.com/en-us/blog/...&area%5B%5D=47

Which side is the "inlaid pattern?

It's the same on both the drive and non-drive side. If you imagine looking at a regular bottom bracket, you would see a depression which fits the splines laid into the end of the bracket housing. Instead this one has an inlaid shape that looks like it fits a tool with 6 square shaped lugs.

it's a low end-ish taiwan/china bike company still loosely based in England.

are you saying it has notches that a hook spanner will fit into, on the outer edges of the ring? many use a punch to loosen those...

there are hook spanners in various sizes for such parts...

if the 6 indents are in the FACE of the cups... i'd contact them about the tool to remove the BB. remove the bad part in a fairly destructive manner, then get a more normal BB to replace the junked one.

search: "Ridgeback Bicycles" and email them. if you're in England, they have a network of "Stockists" scattered about.

the biggest variety of special BB tools available that i know Does NOT show a 6 point BB tool, other than an external notch type. they sell about thirty or more sockets and wrenches for BBs.
search: "Bikehand.com. catalog"
they even sell special sockets for the bosch mid drive e-motors... those are 7 notch design, mostly....

Campagnolo makes a external 6 notch BB ... Park has the BBT-4 tool for those... not sure of the OD on those cups though.
the Chinese Love to copy other designs, so it may be what you are dealing with... ?

Thanks for looking. It's not external notches, it's an internal pattern that looks like the tool would be pretty much the same size as a regular splined removal tool but instead of having many small splines it would just have 6 large square shaped 'splines'.
I've also spent hours looking at pretty much every tool stockist on the net but no one has anything like it. I will phone the bike company and hope they have some tech person who's been there for 20 years and can remember.
I already tried to loosen it in a mildly destructive manner but it's not budging easily!

So you're basically saying the opposite of this?

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...78b9d8c0ed.jpg

Stop by a bike shop with the bike. If their head mechanic can't identify it, ask for a referral to another shop (probably to a long-established shop).

Or do an image search with your description. Or take a photo and do a Google Lens search.

You CAN post pics of the annoying BB to a Gallery forum here, under your handle, then someone can post that pic here... happens frequently... the "Ten Posts" rule is to reduce spammers and such....

So tool like this?

https://simplybearings.co.uk/shop/pr...xoCZD0QAvD_BwE

Thanks for all the advice guys. I've now posted a picture to an album called unusual bottom bracket. Please can someone copy it to this thread. As you'll see none of the suggestions quite match it.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...34a38e5807.jpg

Thanks for transfering the file. Any ideas who makes / made this?

Yikes, it looks like more issues than just the bottom bracket. not positive from the picture, but it looks like a crack where the seat tube joins the bb, along with significant corrosion.

That’s mud

might be this one

Possibly a pin spanner could get that out if not too tight

​​​​​​https://www.harborfreight.com/adjust...YaAhGWEALw_wcB

it's too tight, rusted in place.

ok.. after seeing that thing, i'd say your only course is to Email the Company and hope that they have a socket for that oddball BB.... Or go pyro and heat that sucker up and get out the 3 ]b. sledge and a punch, and SERIOUSLY Lay into it this time...
or go full-on crazy destructo and start by drilling holes in the cups, in three lines, at 120* intervals, then go at the cups with a big chisel and hammer to crack the thread area. some additional cutting with a rotary burr (Dremel or better) may be needed too...

but before all of that... Is the frame WORTH all that effort? :foo:

like i posted earlier.. it'a low -ish quality Taiwan/China bike sold by a Company in England... from the look of the one weld i'm seeing, the frame is steel, not good steel, and it was poorly welded to begin with... What derailleurs are on it? are the handlebars steel or aluminum? is the stem steel? is the fork suspension or rigid? what is the seat post style? are the rims single wall, or double wall?

look up "Ridgeback bikes for sale" their nicest Aluminum DH frames, with a long travel coiler shock, are for sale for under $75, in England. their Touring bikes seem to be more valued on the used market... 250 to 600 quid. a bare dirt jump-ish, Aluminum, hard tail MX35 frame with Disc mount on the rear is on Ebay at 30 quid... that's a typical specialized hard rock price....
Quick guess... the rare tool will cost about $40-50, and shipping is usually stupid-spendy, from England.

If you can get the other cup out & remove the spindle, then try Sheldon's method-
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tooltips/bbcups.html

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e5296c1bab.jpg

look at about 4 o'clock on the pic that looks like major rust with even a piece coming up

I would say this frame should be trashed ...... or of OP binned

Yeah, that's the right answer, but if I'm feeling jiggy, I would sacrifice a cheap 1/2" drive deep socket to the grinder and hit it with the impact wrench, but yeah, not worth the effort.

It could just be fibrous debris (plant material or from a rag) stuck on with oil and mud.

i start every repair or rebuild with a good Cleaning and Full Inspection of the machine.

I can see why you would say that but I dunno, the rest of the paint looks too good.

Couldn’t link the tool I thought might fit earlier because it has some controversial letters in the URL but search for this on tredz

Cyclo Bottom Bracket Remover Campag

that fits the external BB cups that the Park BBT-4 also fits...
here's the BBT-4 fit description: "Fits six-notch threaded bottom bracket tool fittings with a major diameter (outside of notches) of nominally 44 mm and a minor diameter (inside of notches) of 38 mm"
the BBT-4 is an external cup, external flat wrench.. i have one. i also have one of the Campy BBs it fits.

so... nope, it won't fit the "unusual BB". ;)

Thanks to everyone who replied. You've given me some more ideas of how to tackle it. Just for info this is an old bike my son has and he took the photo. I've always said that anyone who has a bike should know how to fix it. He has finally begun to take that to heart but clearly didn't clean it up before he started!
It may take us a lot of effort to fix but it will be a learning experience. And there's no point him having a fancy bike as it will just get stolen.

I don't know why you can't just use a hammer and a punch, drift or cold chisel to get it out. Especially if you aren't going to use the BB again And it doesn't even need to be a big hammer. Just put the punch at 90° the edge of one of those splines so you are hammering in the direction it needs to turn.

Just make sure you are going the correct direction. Left side has right threading, right side has left threading..... or is it the other way? You should check! Some oddball BB's are different.

If you are rebuilding the bike from the frame up and buying new components, you really want it to be a worthy frame. Otherwise you are putting lipstick on a sow. And could have bought another bike for less that needs nothing done to it.

But for learning experience, it might be reasonable regardless of the cost.

My "Modern Bike Repair, 101" Class was a Trek 720 MTB i bought for $45, then discovered that it needed just about EVERYTHING rebuilt or replaced... i spent more on tools than parts... the experience and education is Priceless.

i still have all of those tools.. except the chromed 13mm Park cone wrench i snapped getting a mongoose BMX front axle loose. Park Tools sent me a new one after i emailed them a pic of it,and assured them that i had broken it bare handed, without a helper bar.. the pic included a view of my right forearm.:D

Hi everyone. Just thought I'd report back for your interest.
Ridgeback, the bike company, tried to be helpful but the company had changed hands so many times that no one had experience of the strange bottom bracket except to say that it was "probably Chinese" Local bike shop also had not seen anything like it.
Once I got to look at the bike myself it turned out that the drive side had a regular set of flats on the external diameter of the BB and could be removed easily with an impact wrench. Inside was an old style set of cups with cones on the shaft and loose ball bearings. So far so good...
However, the non-drive side (as per the picture) was not shifting. We tried hitting it with punch and 4 pound hammer, heating it up and letter it cool, gripping the small amount of thread protruding in a vice and turning the bike, all to no effect.
As advised on this forum we then tried the 'bolt' method. Initially we used an M10 set screw that I had lying around with a stack of washers. Rather than the BB coming loose we rounded a few nuts and extruded a few washers into nice cone shapes! But it did seem like this was the only chance to loosen it.
Finally we realised that an M16 hex head should fit with its corners poking into the strange 6 spline indent on the bracket. So I bought one M16 setscrew from a hardware shop and pulled it tight against the bracket using an old box spanner instead of the washer stack. (see photos in album "unusual bottom bracket"). This tightened up well but wouldn't turn the BB even with a yard long scaffolding pole on the spanner on the drive side nut. But as the bolt head was now nicely jammed into the BB indents on the non-drive side we decided to put the spanner on the non-drive side and hit it. Finally it moved! It never came loose until almost the whole way out but strangely there wasn't much sign of corrosion on the threads.
We cleaned up the threads and inserted a standard BB with plenty of grease. Both sides screwed in pretty much all the way by hand.
So if anyone finds one like that again, get yourself an M16 bolt!