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Bike maintenance: bottom bracket
A couple of weeks ago I entertained the Sunday ride with a very creaky and clicky fixed wheel bike, basically every push on the peddles resulted in an awful racket - amplified by the pannier rack on the back.
Having done most bike maintenance tasks to varying degrees I decided that I needed to change the bottom bracket. Resulting in an expensive trip around Condor cycles, where parts & tools were acquired.
Job started Saturday morning, didn't get off to a good start as I stripped the thread on one of the crank arms trying to extract using the puller. Eventually managed to remove both crank arms, and strip down chainring. I managed to remove one side of the bottom bracket, but failed miserably removing the other - using a very large adjustable wrench I was able to apply a fair amount of torque and succeed in moving the offending socket only a fraction of a degree. Stuck and confused I popped over to Trisports and had a chat with the guys in the workshop, who were very helpful, and they gave me two really useful pieces of advise:
1) standing at the rear of the bike (when its the right way up!), bottom brackets bearings are undone by lifting the spanner upwards (i.e. conventional thread on one side and anticlockwise thread on other)
2) if the joint is stuck, boil a kettle and pour the hot water on the bracket - the heat will expand the aluminium just enough to allow it to move
Armed with this knowledge, I returned home and within 10 minutes had loosened and removed the old bearings.
I then cleaned out all of the rusty mess from the inside of the bottom bracket and applied some lithium grease.
New bearings inserted and done up good and tight; easy way to remember which way to undo is to consider that the thread is the opposite way to the normal direction of pedal rotation (so that any force create during peddling will tighten the joint not loosen it)
Finally re-assmbled the chainring, with new bolts, again done up nice and tight.
With the bike back together, the offending creaking noise is completely gone to be replaced by a mechanical purr of chain and gear meshing - lovely.
Hope this is of help to anyone else suffering from a noisy bike.
Last bike maintenance challenge remaining is to rebuild a wheel, but that is definitely one for another day!
Having done most bike maintenance tasks to varying degrees I decided that I needed to change the bottom bracket. Resulting in an expensive trip around Condor cycles, where parts & tools were acquired.
Job started Saturday morning, didn't get off to a good start as I stripped the thread on one of the crank arms trying to extract using the puller. Eventually managed to remove both crank arms, and strip down chainring. I managed to remove one side of the bottom bracket, but failed miserably removing the other - using a very large adjustable wrench I was able to apply a fair amount of torque and succeed in moving the offending socket only a fraction of a degree. Stuck and confused I popped over to Trisports and had a chat with the guys in the workshop, who were very helpful, and they gave me two really useful pieces of advise:
1) standing at the rear of the bike (when its the right way up!), bottom brackets bearings are undone by lifting the spanner upwards (i.e. conventional thread on one side and anticlockwise thread on other)
2) if the joint is stuck, boil a kettle and pour the hot water on the bracket - the heat will expand the aluminium just enough to allow it to move
Armed with this knowledge, I returned home and within 10 minutes had loosened and removed the old bearings.
I then cleaned out all of the rusty mess from the inside of the bottom bracket and applied some lithium grease.
New bearings inserted and done up good and tight; easy way to remember which way to undo is to consider that the thread is the opposite way to the normal direction of pedal rotation (so that any force create during peddling will tighten the joint not loosen it)
Finally re-assmbled the chainring, with new bolts, again done up nice and tight.
With the bike back together, the offending creaking noise is completely gone to be replaced by a mechanical purr of chain and gear meshing - lovely.
Hope this is of help to anyone else suffering from a noisy bike.
Last bike maintenance challenge remaining is to rebuild a wheel, but that is definitely one for another day!