bdinger

Well last Sunday I decided to take a ride to the LBS to pick up some new handlebar tape and other odds and ends. About halfway home, however, I broke something else. Whoops



That's a Sugino XD crankset on a Long Haul Trucker, or at least what's left of it. You see, I'm an unabashed masher. Or rather I'm trying to mend my ways, but that crank has endured 10-15,000 miles of mashing torque. And it said enough! All looked dreary, right as things were getting positive. You see right now ain't exactly the best with finances thanks to some unexpected medical bills and vehicle repair that totalled more of the cost of the LHT, draining the "slush fund". However, a buddy - a great buddy - sent me this:


Victory!!! He seemingly read my mind as I was looking at other options besides Sugino, confused about them, and was considering dropping the front chainrings a bit in ratio. I previously had 26/36/48t on the front rings, this dumped it down a little - enough! - to 22/32/44t. Which is, frankly, quite perfect as there really is no occasions other than downhill on the highway that I've used the 48/11 combo. And I really don't like riding on the highway, I much rather prefer MUPs and gravel, of which I spend the most time in 36/13. I'm very close in gear inches with the 32/11 combo and might even use the big ring once in a while.

Okay, now on to installation. I was determined to "save money" and install it myself. GO AHEAD AND START LAUGHING NOW. After three days, two LBS trips, and a trip to Lowe's I'm done. Here are the tools purchased to accomplish it:
Park Tools AWS-1 Wrench set (because I've managed to lose all of my allen tools)
Park Tools AWS-3 wrenches (see above..)
Park Tools CCP-2 Crank Puller (no, a rubber mallet will NOT work.. )
Park Tools BBT-32 BB tool (this was the only "cheap" item)
Park Tools BBT-9 External BB Tool (can't have one!)
Park PolyLube assembly lube (SILENCE)

Okay, so now I have $100 in tools.. I'm ready, right? Oh no wait! Don't forget a new chain. SRAM-PC951 bought, and ready. I'm not sure about the durability of SRAM chains, but I do like the powerlink. I like it so much that the chain that came off the bike had two. Reasons for that should be obvious by now.

Finally, I'm ready for dis-assembly. You watch videos on the internet and they make it seem.. easy. Guess what? NOPE. They don't account for clyde torque! Eventually after enough arm torque, cursing, and more arm torque - and an hour - I got the old pedals, crank, and bottom bracket out. I then spend another 15 minutes cleaning out the old grease from inside the BB shell, applying new grease, and hoping I got the parts greased enough. Now.. assembly!

I went from a 68mm internal square taper BB to an external BB. On paper man that external BB stuff is neat! In practice.. OH GOOD GRIEF WHY DOES THIS THING NOT LINE UP OMG WHY IS THE CRANK NOT GOING IN OMG I CRUSHED THE STUPID TUBE BECAUSE I DIDN'T USE SPACERS OMG I USE SPACERS AND NOW THE OTHER CRANK WON'T GO ON OMG WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH YOU, YOU INFERNAL..

you get the idea

After another 20-30 minutes of cussing and messing with spacers I finally got annoyed and put one spacer on each side, slid the crank in, and put the other crankarm on. I can only thank Shimano for putting notches on the non-drive crankarm to align it, as I can only speculate the amount of cursing and tool-throwing would have ensued had I been left to my own alignment.

Now I'm 90% finished, it looks like the front der will align just fine with the three rings (THANK EVERYTHING that the front der is a friction bar-end), and it spins freely. Here's what it looks like:


I will admit, these external BB cranksets are something awesome! Compared to the infernal pain I went through dis-assembling the square taper crank, the four times I had to disassemble the new set took about a third of the time it took to dis-assemble the old set.

It's also nice to have the tools to do this yourself, even if I may have spent twice what it would have cost to repair it in tools.. BUT THAT'S OK.

Why is it OK?

I'm a Clyde, and I will break it again.

Askel

Clyde Torque: Tighten until stripped, back off one quarter turn.


I just finished building up a bike from a frame. While I've done nearly everything involved in that process, never all at once.

It was a learning experience. But I can't decide if I'm never ever going to do that again, or never ever ride a bike built by somebody else after seeing how many ways it can go wrong.

CliftonGK1

My recent build-up of an RL Conquest Pro was my 5th "from the frame on up" bike build, and there were some firsts in there for me. Always a fun learning experience...

First bike with an internal headset.
- Truth be told, IS design is really simple and easy but I wanted to learn ev-er-y-thang about this build. So when I took it in to my LBS guys to mooch some of their tools and knowledge, I got to suffer the razzing of asking my noob questions. Like, "how does the crown race setter go together?" and "how does the star-nut setter work?" I had never done those operations on previous bikes. I had pressed ES type headset cups, but someone else had always done the "finesse" manouvres. So there I am with a plastic mallet, tippity-tapping on the race setter with the shop guys laughing until one of them says "just get a regular hammer and whang on it until the sound changes."

First bike with BB-30.
- Also not a tough concept: Snap-ring pliers to put in the stop rings, grease up the fitments, and tamp in the bearings, right? Except that with the tamp-fitting tool I couldn't get one of the bearings to go in straight no matter how many times I turned the tool and angled my hammer strikes. Finally, the guys quit chuckling and busted out the big-ass Park headset press with stepped setting cups and told me "this is the easy way to get it right the first time. It's no different than setting an ES cup. Turn it until the press stops." Easy-peasy, and it was done.

It's no different when you're learning to do your first square taper BB and first learn the wheel skewer trick for keeping the tool in place. Or, in the case of Clyde Torque, skewering the tool on, and then clamping it in a bench vise to use the entire frame as leverage to spin the sucker out. Also works for stuck seatposts and frozen quill stems.

bdinger

Askel: LOL, well, I tried to be a little easy on the arm torque on the new stuff. Although the old stuff.. WOW that was on good.

CliftonGK1: The square taper pedals and crank were a solid gold.. PAIN.. to remove. I think as long as it comes off again, I'm sold on this external BB stuff. Really sold. It's pretty awesome, frankly!

At one point I'd like to assemble a bike completely, but, I'll wait a while. For obvious reasons.

TrojanHorse

I just did another bike complete from the frame up (thank goodness the headset was installed already) and I agree - I love those threaded external BB's. You can keep BB30 or whatever they're called.

The good news is, you only have to buy the tools once. Unless you lose them.

The bad news is they change the damn tool required for BB about every 6 years. Had to get a BB-19 tool to get my SRAM GXP BB installed.

And yes, it's amazing all the different ways you can screw up your bike but I mostly got it right this time.

Good luck with yours.

bdinger

I noticed last night that my LHT frame has some cancer - rust - developing on it. Three spots that I should have watched out for, one where I dented the top tube in an accident three years ago, another just above the BB and finally a last one where the top tube and seat tube - and my pump - meet.

So with that, I think my "next bike" is solved . I may try my hand at building this existing frame up as a single speed brawler after I let the shop place the current components on a new frame. Or I may just keep riding it until it gets really bad.. who knows!

CliftonGK1

I've got GXP setups on 2 1/2 of my bikes. I use a SRAM S300 single on both my beater commuter and my nice commuter/distance bike. I have a SRAM Red crank on my CX bike, which uses the GXP interface, so I have a pair of Wheels Manufacturing BB30 <--> GXP adapters on there. They're every bit as smooth as the straight up GXP bearings, and there's less chance of creaking at the BB since there's nothing threaded at the interface.