Tags
Bottom bracket, FMB, FSZ, Hamme, Hellcross, Hope, Hope Tech, Look, Malteni, singlespeed.nl, Stevens, Swiss stop, T-Bikes, Token, Wiesbaden
We were supposed to be racing in Helsingør today, but our ride broke down while still in Sweden. Both Bender and I were none too enthusiastic about the idea of catching a train up there so we decided to dedicate our Sunday to ‘fixing’ the bikes.
After the infamous Wiesbaden-Hamme Zogge-Hellcross weekend we noticed that the bottom brackets, pedal bearings, jockey wheels, and brake cables were either completely shot or needed a bit of TLC.
I saw this as an opportunity to do a little product testing. For those of you that remember the ‘good old days’ when bikes had square taper bottom brackets that lasted at least a couple of years, this outboard BB thing that has supposedly increased the stiffness and made maintenance easier has also increased the number of BB’s that you go through so that you count their lifetime in months not years. The two FSA BB’s that came on the bike had done just 7 races. Talk about torture testing! The mud and pressure washing was apparently too much for them, one was dead and the other definitely worse for wear. Now in the sponsor vacuum that exists regarding small parts in Team Malteni/Stevens it was up to me to figure our what to do now. When a salesman from T-Bikes came past the shop with the new line up from Token the other day he had a nice shiny new BB with him and I saw the opportunity this season to do some testing. He was kind enough to give it to me when I suggested to him my plan. I decided to put it up against a Hope BB, valued at more than twice the price it should make for a good test of value for money.
The pedals came next. They couldn’t even turn around any more. In Look’s defense all my pedals are at least 2 years old, way longer than you could ever imagine to get from a Crank Brothers Eggbeater, but now they had had enough.
I challenge any Eggbeater pedal to look this good after it has done as many kilometers as this one has 🙂
This season has been hard on wheels too. It started with the discovery that I had worn through the braking surface of a set of Chinese carbon wheels, that was one down. I ripped the spokes out from the front hub of a FRM/Zipp set that I got from my friend Christian, luckily no money had passed hands at that stage, two down. William from Malteni has lent me an aluminum set of Vision wheels from FSA, the bearings in them don’t go round any more. The first set of carbon cross wheels I ever bought that are still going (new hub at the rear though) but they need new bearings too. So I now have a list of 6 different kinds of bearings that I need to source before we leave again on Thursday next week So now Bender is almost finished, all the cables have been changed, a set of brake pads too, and now the bikes have a ‘new’ feeling to them again. Well at least for a few more weeks anyway…