I'm building up an early 70's Moto Grand Record.

I had an old French Campy BB in primo shape, so I installed it but could not get rid of the wiggle, unless of course I tightened just a bit more which gave me indexing.

I thought I should get the BB shell refaced and chased because it did look kind of chewed up. Instead I decided to save the Campy BB for a rainy day and ordered a nice-and-easy sealed bearing IRD, thinking the adjustment would ostensibly be done for me.

Getting the drive-side cup off was a bear, but it gave, and I threw the French cups on there, plopped it in - similar problem. Once the adjustable cup started threading and therefore pushing itself over the sealed bearing ring, the spindle's action was resistant.

Is something lining up just a little wonky because of the shell face or threading?

I'll be looking for some answers here myself. I had a recent frame, looked primo. Installed a new cartridge bb, drive side first, naturally. Everything went in fine. But I couldn't help but notice on the adjustable side, the spindle was way off center, and sure enough, when I tried to install the adjustable cup, it would not clear the body of the cartridge. So I installed a cup and cone instead. Never could get the tension right. It was either binding up, or loose. Threads looked really good on both sides, but it was obviously out of square. Figured it needed the shell rethreaded, or something. Traded it off at minimal value, to a smarter guy than me, with full disclosure.\\

It's normal for a new sealed bearing to have a little resistance, especially if the adjustable cup has a seal ring.

If the IRD cups threaded in fine, without resistance, then the threads probably don't need chasing, and most cartridge bearing BBs are much more forgiving of poor facing than loose ball BBs, so I'm not really sure what's going on in your situation. It may be, as in wrk101's example, that the threading just isn't square, and never was (I'm willing to bet many mass produced bikes came out of the factory this way). In that case, chasing and refacing won't really correct the issue.

i'm interested in this too. when overhauling a bike or building up an old frame, what all should be done to the bb shell? if you're merely reinstalling the old cups, should you reface the shell threads?

I've always wanted a BB chasing jig but like it was said earlier, if the threads are cut so crooked that the spindle is not centered on the non-drive side when a cartridge BB is inserted then I doubt a simple chase/face jig is going to do much good in solving that issue. A machine shop might be able to help if there is enough metal in there to fix the threads.

What it comes down to is that a lot of bikes were made crappy -even so-called "higher-end" frames. The lack of craftsmanship and attention can be seen everywhere on the frame and I don't doubt that some "important things" like getting the BB mounted and threaded squarely sometimes just missed the mark. This is the nice thing about lugged frames. You can really tell by the attention to detail and the craftsmanship in the lugwork what kind of frame-builder you are dealing with.

As far as when to chase/face -I don't think it ever hurts. If I owned a jig I'd probably do it to every frame that came through my shop. It just makes installing the BB (whether cartridge or cups) that much more enjoyable. Mass-produced bicycles take many short-cuts. IMHO every frame should get a chase/face after paint and before final assembly of the BB. I've seen so many bikes that the BB threads were just crappy and filled with paint and the outer lip of the BB all chippy with the old paint and just crappy to deal with with the lockring on non-cartridge BB's.

If I found a chase/face tool used I'd probably drop a couple hundred bucks into it just to have it if it were still serviceable.

jebensch, It doesn't hurt to face a BB shell, or head tube if there is still OEM paint on the ends. Chasing the threads simply cleans the threading of any corrosion and will repair any bad threads.

Brad

I recently installed a phil BB on my new-to-me merckx frame, in went in straight, but tight (hard to turn) the whole way. When I finished, the spindle was noticably more resistant than pre-install. So I pulled it, and had the threads chased. Both cups went on smoothly and tightened up further inboard. Spindle was nice and smooth.

Last summer I rotated through all my bikes on my morning commute just so I could throw them in the stand and do a face-n-chase of the BBs. On two bikes, the Professional and on my (since stolen) Centurion, it made a noticeable difference. I took close to a mm of material (mostly what seemed to be a big paint drip but also a good amount of steel) off the NDS of the shell, around the 7-8 o'clock postion. Now the lockring actually locks on and stays put. Chasing the threads is something I did just as a matter of course when I overhauled the bottom brackets.

SO when is it time? When you're having problems with your bottom bracket. Or before.

I'm seriously thinking about buying the Ice Tools Bottom Bracket Chase/Face Kit for $200.

If I could offer this service to friends and my infrequent customers at $20/pop I think I could pay for it fairly quickly.

The Ice Toolz set very inexpensive. So cheap in fact, that I would not buy it without having seen it first.

At $200 if one needs to replace the cutting dies after 10 uses then one has already paid for the tool anyhow. My LBS charges me $25 to Chase/face if I bring in a BARE FRAME -more if they have to remove the BB or if the frame is attached to a bike that they have to lift up into the bike stand.

If I get 8 uses out of it the tool will have paid for itself.

The only issue I have with the set would be if 26TPI taps are available. Because I do a LOT of English 3-speeds. They make up nearly half of what goes through my shop. If I could get an extra set of taps (or the Park ones fit the Ice Tools jig) I'd buy the thing right now. I'd probably get the Italian taps too as just one use nearly pays for them.

Most vintage bottom bracket shells were not line bored then threaded.
So, using a interlocked set of taps and after that facing the shell is almost mandatory for best results.
Even if the shell was perfect before brazing it will not be after.
I like the Campagnolo tool set for this, reason is that the facing tool is aligned to the center of an interlocked insert that threads into the shell, so the faces get aligned to the threading of the shell that you just cleaned up.
The Campagnolo tool sets the standard for this. Marchetti also makes a terrific tooling for this but it is production oriented.

Some bottom bracket shells are amazingly wonky. Seems to show up most on the "pressed" examples.

I would encourage facing on just about any French bike as the quality control is often "a bit off". The BB on my NOS Lejeuene benefited from a face and chase. Also had Ray face a couple of other Lejeune frames I own. Ray's comment was that none of them appear to have ever been faced.

Hmm...I've elected to face & chase; however, I've since called a couple of shops and they don't have the die to service the French threaded BB. Ugh. French.

Facing and chasing are two separate things:

Facing shaves off burs and other surface imperfections from the outer face of the BB shell, creating two perfectly parallel "faces" for the cups and/or lockrings to seat against. This ensures that the bearing races are perfectly parallel to each other and the ball tension is therefore equal all the way around the races. This is much less important if you use a cartridge bearing BB, which has all its races and bearings self-contained.

Chasing just cleans out the threads and "chases" out any rust or other crud, and also re-aligns any slightly bunged threads. IMO, there's no reason not to chase every time you reinstall a BB; it doesn't really remove an appreciable amount of metal.

On the other hand, I only face if necessary, or if the shell still measures at or close to its original length (68mm). Every time you face, you remove fractions of a millimeter from the overall length of the BB shell, and it's not uncommon to find shells that have been faced so many times that they are a few mm shorter than they should be! While not catastrophic, and compensatable with spacers, it's not an ideal outcome. So unless there's a reason to believe the shell faces requires re-facing (unknown history of the bike, obvious damage from cups being installed many times, new paint/poweder, etc), I would hold off.

I'm not surprised. Have you tried Broadway Bicycle school? They may have the tool, and if they do, you can rent it by 5-minute increments and do the work yourself in their space. Could cost you as little as $10.

Well, it seems like regardless of whether the threads are chased or not, the refacing tool uses the threading for a part of its setup - is that correct? Because so far, nobody is able to reface a French BB shell.

So - this really turns this thread into another question: if you MUST leave your BB imperfectly adjusted, should it be a bit loose (wobble), or a bit tight (binding). I'd guess wobble is the better route.

There's also this if I felt like spending more money. Would this solve for x?

There is debate over which is better-- slightly loose, or slightly binding. Jobst Brandt would argue that slighty binding is actually how it *should* be, always. The concept is pre-load, which ensures that all the balls are under more or less similar compression around the race, even when you're standing on the crank. When there's no pre-load, then when all your weight is on the crank, only the bottom one or two balls are supporting all the load while the rest of the balls are under zero load. This will cause the race to wear out in that one area, and all the balls will wear prematurely. Even if you think there is no play, but little to no pre-load, there will be more play as the race stretches slightly under the weight of the rider standing on the crank. If pre-load is *too* high, then you can also get premature wear of the balls and races.

It's one of those black arts and everyone has their own personal comfort threshold for pre-load. Personally I like to have just a little bit if pre-load dialed into my BB adjustment, enough that I can feel slight resistance when turning the spindle by finger (with no crank arms attached). I always adjust it without any crank arms bolted on, because the inertia of the spinning crank can mask varying degrees of pre-load. If I have to squeeze the spindle really hard with two fingers to get it to rotate, that's too much pre-load. If you're getting indexing with even very slight pre-load, then either your spindle races or your cup races are probably shot, even if they look great to the naked eye.