Friday, June 11, 2010

Velo Orange Threadless Grand Cru BB: AHM LOVIN' IT!

Got one of these for the Concept due to my BB threads issue:


That issue being that the threads are worn to the point that the BB would actually have play in there if you moved the crank arm back and forth. Nevermind the sound while pedaling. I know, long story.. But yeah, fucked in other words. I talked to a few friends about what I should do about it and the two options were to have the BB rethreaded italian or, just get a threadless BB. At first I thought the idea of retapping the BB would be great but the idea of skimming a little meat off there left much to be desired. The only threadless BB I could think of out there was the old Mavic one. Which are not easily had and certainly not cheap. Then I remembered that VO had recently come out with a new one. JIS taper too- SCHWEET!!

I got it in the mail a couple of weeks ago along with some other tasty treats from Ben's and tossed it in there. By 'toss' I would more closely compare the installation of that fffffucking thing to pushing a car by yourself three blocks uphill to a gas station.. not that I've ever had to do that before.. certainly not more than once..

Right, so after all that and I was finally able to get the bike out on the road for the first non creeky time in a while, I was super stoked! The BB is totally solid in it's shell now and spins great. Easily compares to the Dura Ace BB I had in there before..

I've been riding the Concept for a good 5+ years now and it gets the most mileage of any other bike I've got by a long shot. The fact that VO's BB was able to help me save my trusty ol' frame without having to make any major modifications or cost is amazing! At $60 bones, it's well worth the price..

THANK YOU VELO ORANGE!!!


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4 comments:

Unknown said...

What happened to cause your existing bb threads to wear out?

Were you riding with a loose cup for a while?

Alan Sikirić said...

Well, I made the mistake of installing a phil wood BB with their typically narrow Steel rings instead of the aluminum ones. I have no idea why I did that. Really fucking stupid! Anyways, after riding it like that for like a year it started getting loose. I of course took the Phil BB out as soon as I realized my error and replaced it with a BB with much wider alloy threads. Which was fine for a really long time. Though since the outer section of the threads were loose the inner area became loose eventually as well. Hence my needing to toss a threadless BB in there now. So yeah, lesson learned!

Christian Coomer said...

Shit, I have those small steel cups in one of my frames right now...probably a good idea to replace them with the Phil alloy ones then I'm guessing?

Alan Sikirić said...

If your frame is alloy than yeah, swap out the steel ones for some aluminum rings instead..