Facing your BB Shells
 

how important is it to have your bb shells faced? how can they wear and how often should they be brought in to a lbs to get it faced?

thanks
tina

This is required for proper seating of the cups or cartridge and should be done by the manufacturer, checked by the builder, and should only need to be done once.

Tina, Fact of the matter is that off the shelf frames are seldom perfect. Facing the BB, or the head tube, is a finishing step for a frame prior to attaching components to insure uniform and parallel seating and is, as Sixty Fiver wrote, only performed once. The BB shell's threads are often chased at the same time it is faced.

Brad

It depends on the type of bottom bracket in use. If it's a square taper cartridge BB it's not necessary. Outboard bearing styles require require square shell facing for longevity. If you have the outboard bearing style and you've had the bike for a couple years with no bearing problems, it's a good indicator of a BB shell that is good to go. Needs only to be faced square once. There's nothing to cause that surface to wear.

25 years ago Italian steel frames came from the supplier, prestige brands ,
expecting the retail shop to do that work.
So the shops selling the framesets and building them into bikes,
all had purchased the tool set to do that .

And Campagnolo sold a brilliant tool set to do all that prep work.

It does not depend... the bb shell needs to be faced so the cups, cartridge, or external bb sits flush against the shell although you are right in that external bottom brackets are intolerant of less than perfect frame prep.

It is a simple job to do if you have the right tools although it can also be done very carefully by hand although you should have bottom bracket taps to chase the threads and these are not cheap.

Yes they did, and they cost as much as a car at the time. IIRC, even worse, you needed two sets, one for English and one for Italian threaded frames. Only a prosperous shop or very well heeled individual rider could afford them.

I've found working in shops that it isn't as often necessary as you'd think.

necessary or overlooked?

Park of course offers a cheaper chase and face tool set.

Phil Wood BBs , dont need the facing , but thread chasing cleanup is often welcome,
after painting. and powdercoat, leaving paint on the face is beneficial then

you really only need a second set of BB taps ,for Italian and British threads
not even a second tool handle..

Most frames now come from the manufacturer with a decent level of finishing and I have not had to face that many production frames in the last 20 years.

Did one the other day but that was because I had re-tapped and re-sized a Raleigh bottom bracket to a 73 mm standard.

+10 on facing/chasing.

I'm a big guy and used to go through production BB once every 1000 miles or so. I used square taper units with machined races, hardened steel cups, both cheap and expensive. Nothing helped. Shop in Berkeley, whom I started buying bikes from was prepping a Bridgestone 700 bike I just bought, this was back in the late 80's. He had removed the crank and BB, then whipped out this chase/face tool and cleaned the BB up, re-installed it, and added an extra plastic accordian sleeve inside too, and then re-assembled it all. I must have put 7000 miles on it, and I still have the 600EX BB spindle, and cups and it's still good to use. I replaced it with some new fangled cartridge unit later before I sold the bike, but had to keep that BB just because I was so impressed. Once I started working in a shop and had access to their tools, we serviced our own bikes after hours all the time. And we got a great deal on some high-end machined spindles and cups that came in one day with "Specialized" branding, but I think they were a shipment from Suntour or Maeda Industries or something. I chased and faced and installed one compatible with my Sugino crankset on a tourer and another on a Sakae FX crank on my street hybrid/beater MB-6. I still have that same crankset and same specialized BB on the MB-6 after 20+ years.

I know the bikes are coming off the production line with better specs on the BB these days. But if you're going through BB's constantly and can't get the settings to work so the BB stays tight to spec but still spins free, then it may be worth it to take it in and have the LBS chase and face it once.

overlooked and customer doesn't want to pay for it

U can get cheap sets tho, for 250 bucks u can buy a set. For a house is perfect because u never face frames more than once per year if you paint your frames 1 per year. if not maybe once each 10 years hehehe :D

say what?

Darn forgot the subject... sorry... U can get a facing set for 250 bucks.