ahandley

I am trying to remove the encased barring from a mid 80"s Trek 820. The threads are stripped on drive side, so my wrench just slips when I put any pressure on it. Any suggestions on how to remove, or should i just take it to LBS and let them deal with it? Any suggestions appreciated.

bobotech

Did you get the non-drive side out already? Is it a loose ball bottom bracket or is it a cartridge BB? Remember also, the drive side is reverse thread, so you turn the cup clockwise to loosen it, not counter-clockwise like normal.

ahandley

No, I have not been able to get either side off. It does have the bearings in a cartridge. I think that if I can get the drive side off that the cartridge will come our and I can then use a lube to loosen the non-drive side. The problem is that the threads are stripped on inside of the hub of the drive side and the bottom bracket wrench will not get if off.

HillRider

If it is a cartridge bottom bracket, the remover tool has splines as does the cartridge. If you tore up the splines, you will have a real problem removing the bb. A trip to the LBS is now warranted.

cny-bikeman

The NDS is likely a hard plastic/resin, and can be removed by carefully splitting it and then prying it out.

HillRider

Apparently the problem is also, or exclusively, with the DS cartridge.

ahandley

Thanks. The splines are really stripped out bad. Picked it up at a junk yard .... so there you go. I did notice that the nds did look like plastic. Chipping it out will take time, but seems like the best way to remove at this point.

Thanks for the help.

bobotech

What I have done in a situation like yours is to use a woodworking clamp and clamp the bb to the tool so it won't move then I used a LOT of leverage with the biggest wrench I had and cheater bar. Breaks them free usually. And since the clamp is holding the tool to the bb, the pressure holding the tool in place actually forces the tool to hold into the bb even tighter as you loosen it a tiny bit. You only do this jsut enough to break it free.

Remember also that the drive side of the bb is removed CLOCKwise, so righty loosely and lefty tighty.

Continuity

I just removed a *bastard* of a BB that had been in my 1992 Marin Eldridge Grade MTB from new (1992), and never removed or remounted. The plastic NDS cup's splines were totally mashed up and it couldn't even grip a BB tool that was really torqued into it.

I ended up buying more tools to remove this BB than it would cost me for 2 or 3x new mid-quality ones! <*g*>

I bought a Pedro's BB socket holder tool (£10 or so online):


Which, although I'm not going to use it every day exactly, I'm glad I got it as it works really well.

I bought a 'Fat Spanner' brand BB remover tool (£12 online) with integrated handle which just bent when I tried to use it on this BB.

I also bought a 2-foot Stilson wrench to work the heavy-duty Var BB tool I bought (Decathlon - £10) - this, with some boot pressure *finally* started to turn the BB. Yay!


This still left the plastic cup with the mashed splines in, along with the BB itself. What I did then, to cut a long story short, is that I whacked the BB axle with a heavy mallet from the NDS side (with the stuck plastic cup), and this eventually made the BB fly across the garden on about the 10th whack. This still left the plastic cup in, however....

I then got out a hot air gun - the type used for stripping paint - and on it's 'Low' setting, I then melted the plastic cup using 10-second or so bursts of the gun. This melted the plastic enough that I could scrape it out in chunks with a blade. When I'd removed most of it, I then switched to using a brass bristle brush on the melted plastic bits remaining, and this cleaned it from the threads pretty well. I then finished it off using a Dremel-alike (Aldi - £14!) with a brass bristle wheel to clean the inside of the BB shell.

I chased the threads out with a metal BB cup which I threaded in by hand a few turns, and then threaded out, cleaned it with a brass brush, and then repeated, going a bit deeper every time, until it was finally seated as far as it would go.

I then mounted the new BB using judicious quantities of copper grease and Teflon plumbers tape.

All in all, I was pretty pleased I'd finally managed to replace this BB - it cost a lot in tools, blood and sweat, and left the bike with a little ding on the BB shell where I'd missed the axle slightly with the mallet, but on the whole it could have been a lot worse.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to remove these damn Shimano SPD pedals for servicing that are stuck fast on my Deore DX crankset!