At my local bike shop I picked up a Park Tool BB-19 bottom bracket tool for an upcoming project. I now have three different bottom bracket tools hanging on my tool board. The older ones are for the square taper fixed flange cartridge type BB and the newer hollow splined axle versions. All my bikes use the cartridge style bottom brackets so I have no experience with the old school cup and lock ring stuff from the vintage days. It may seem irritating to have to buy three different tools to do the same thing but I have been wrenching on bikes for more than 20 years and in this time I have seen the components evolve and improve.
Bottom bracket technology is an area that has seen a dramatic reduction in weight and because of the shift away from the heavy solid steel square taper axle the tools have had to change to accommodate the dimensions of the newest designs. Progress marches on and being a gear head I don't mind having to buy a new tool once in a while and learn how the new stuff works.
My recumbent bike is the first bike I have owned that uses the 16 notch external bearing BB cups so this is the reason for the BB-19. A parcel finally arrived the other day from the Hostel shoppe containing this awesome carbon fiber boom. The boom was a special order from HP Velotechnik in Germany. I can't wait to see it installed on my bike.
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| Nothing quite like carbon weave in the sunshine |
Nice new toys! Mike, did ya ever look at http://monkeylikeshiny.blogspot.com/ ? the fella over there is also always doing neat stuff. I like the drawing in your earlier post, reminds me of Giotto's circle.
ReplyDeleteTake good care, Tom AB9NZ
Hi Tom,
ReplyDeleteI checked out monkeylikeshiny. Guys got a serious machine/fab shop and works on Bikes to find his Zen -very cool. He's a lucky man!
Old school cup and bb bottom brackets were the work of the devil, even the good ones. The second the first cartridge BB came out I swapped never to look back.
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