Originally Posted by
smashndash
The crazy thing about tolerances is that it’s usually only a minority of people affected by them. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I would say even a 2% defect rate would be enough to cause a significant amount of noise online. But that also means, if you select a bike randomly (hopefully this bike wasn’t on clearance because it was crappy), you could have a 98% chance of nothing being wrong. It seems like more than 2% of BB90 bikes need some sort of fix - oversized bearings are one of them, but that’s a bad solution for hopefully obvious reasons.
BBright is a better standard than BB90 *theoretically* because it allows for a sleeve, even with 30mm spindles.
Yes, if either the BBright or the BB90 were truly horrible in terms of fail rate, the internet would be on fire with complaints. Especially Trek being the largest US seller. It does say something though that they're going T47. And Hambini owns a Cervelo which if you watch his previous videos, he rode a lot, with very few complaints...and I watched his long-term review of it and he didn't mention anything about the bottom bracket IIRC. It was this *other* Cervelo frame that a customer of his sent him, which had exhibited problems with his Hambini bottom bracket, which then led him down the rabbit hole to find the design drawings with the "unacceptable tolerance levels" signed off by, apparently, his arch-nemesis Damon Rinard (now at Cannondale).
Incycle is an official Cervelo dealer, and they seem to have some previous year stock they're clearancing, so I don't believe this was a one-off crappy bike (they seem to have another couple of 51cm in other local area stores, and a 61cm of it as well). I've seen this type of clearance happen for multiple brands in multiple stores (including online stores)--seems to be if you're willing to wait a model year or two later, you can score some great deals on bikes. You just have to pray that they have your size. I had been disappointed so often when I'd seen a bike I was interested in being clearanced, only to find it was in a size that was way different than mine (I can ride anywhere from a 50-52cm but most clearance bikes seem to be either very small like 48cm or very large like 58-61).
So far so good with the Cervelo. I'm crossing my fingers that I don't develop any BB problems. Though having just gotten back into cycling after a very long hiatus, I'm not even sure how long BBs are expected to last.