Bat56

My winter bikes have always had traditional "inboard" cartridge bottom brackets and I have had zero trouble. As I consider some upgrades I am looking at external bottom brackets. My simple analysis considers that external bearing might be more exposed and more susceptible to winter conditions so I want to see what you folks think.

My main winter bike pretty much gets snow packed early in winter and gets very little maintenance related attention until things melt in spring. Since this has worked so far should I stick with internal bottom brackets or is external no big difference?

SnowJob

Hey, since I live in your neck of the woods, I'll give you my experiences: I've had winter bikes running both kinds of bottom brackets and haven't had any more issues with the outboard bearing than the cartridge bottom brackets. I was a little worried too, when I went to outboard bearing, but they seem to be pretty durable and don't gunk up any more than the older kind.

Right now both my bikes use the shimano hollowtech bbs. My 'cross bike has the cheapest variety and that has held up for about two years through every kind of weather and probably close to 15-20k miles. My mtb, my main winter whip, has an XT. The crankset came with a Raceface outboard bearing bb, but that thing was a piece of **** and lasted all of about 2 weeks. My mtb hangs out outside all winter long and stays pretty grungy, but I've never had any problems with the cranks or bottom bracket.

Good luck!