Ya Tu Sabes

So I was building up a super-ghetto beater using an old French frame (hence, French bottom bracket), but the extractor threads on one of the cranks were stripped, so I had to take apart the bottom bracket to replace the cranks. This meant that I had to replace the spindle and the non-drive-side bb cup (because they were stuck to the crank arm). I had an extra spindle, but the only other cup I had lying around wouldn't thread into the shell as far as the original, causing the spindle to be loose. Unwilling to spend any money on the project, I just added a second layer of ball bearings in the cup, sort of like spacers. Everything seems to work fine now - the spindle turns smoothly and the bike rides well.

My question to you experts is this: Am I a low-end genius or a person on the verge of some kind of weird bike failure?

Landgolier

That gets all the awesome points I have to hand out today. You're getting more friction than the average bear since you have more contact surfaces in there, but so long as the bearings can't actually shift, there's no mechanical reason why this shouldn't work. It's going to wear out bearings, crappy spindles, and bb cups a little faster than a normal setup (oh the horror!), but what the heck, just run the sucker.

Ya Tu Sabes

Awesome. That's exactly what I wanted to hear.

dafydd

take the the nondrive cup/spindle/crankarm, rest the cup on the jaws of a vise to support it, whack the spindle off the crank with a drift and hammer.

something wrong with the new cup if it won't thread in as far as the original (either that or the new spindle's center width is wrong), and there's definitely something wrong with two layers of balls.

Ya Tu Sabes

Tried and tried and tried and couldn't get the thing loose, and then my wife started complaining about all the racket (basement workshop directly below living room/home office).

Well, the new cup is from a modern English bb that I just replaced with a cartridge style bb, and it's going into a French bb shell. When I compared the replacement cup to the French cup, it was definitely longer. Since the replacement cup fit fine in the English frame where it used to live, I assume there's nothing wrong with it.

As for the spindle, I had the same thought, but I compared the replacement spindle to the old one, and they are identical in every way (except that the old one is stuck to a crank arm).

But what is it that's wrong with the extra layer of balls (aside from the already mentioned increase in friction)? This is a coaster brake beater, keep in mind, and I spent a total of $36 on it (plus the red spray paint I had lying around the shop), so it doesn't need to be perfect, just functional. I desperately want to believe that I came up with a good, low-cost solution to an annoying problem, but I also want to know how this set-up may fail me.