Thanas

Hello,

In December 2014 I purchased a Cube Cross Race Disc. A CX bike, new from the bike shop.
It came equipped with Shimano 105. I rode it through December till today, lots of commuting 5x a week in bad weather and some touring on weekends and whenever I could.

The bottom bracket is making clicking noises. And when turning the crank without the chain, it feels a bit notchy. I ride in any weather, so the bike has seen it's fair share of rain, snow, salt and all sorts of dirt.

The current installed BB is unmarked for brand and type. Although it's easily recognizable for a Shimano, the type is unknown and I can't make it out from any specsheets of the bike. It only reads, do not disassemble and tighten etc. And BC 1.37x24.

Is it anyway near acceptable that a bottom bracket is due to be replaced after only 2500 km / 1550 mi?

I already have an appointment for the bike-shop to replace it with ultegra. Should I ass them for some sort of warranty / discount?

dabac

Early failures of hollowtech/external BBs etc are quite common.
The snappy response is that the design isn't that clever to start with.
To keep weight and dimensions of the bearings down, they resorted to using very small balls. These don't stand up to contamination and installation error half as well as the designs using bigger balls and preferably also angular contact bearings.
The longer explanation is that Hollowtech BBs are sensitive to the faces of the BB shell being VERY parallell, and that the bearing preload is set just right at assembly.
Single-row cartridge bearings don't like axial loads much.
If you've had one failure already, request the shop to face the BB shell before installing the replacement.
While an upgrade won't hurt, it won't cure a problem caused by a lopsided BB shell. Annd too much preload will trash high-end as readily as it will noname.

I do about 250 km/week on my commuter. In winters roads here are salted and sanded. My SKF square-taper cartridge BB - that came used from another bike at least five years ago - just doesn't seem to wear at all.

dsaul

External bottom brackets put the bearings out in the spray of water from the rear tire. All it takes is one ride in wet, dirty/sandy conditions to get some grit past the seals and you have a crunchy bottom bracket. For a commuter bike that gets ridden in the wet on a regular basis, I'd look into a cheap square taper crankset and UN55 bottom bracket.

Thanas

I dropped the bike off at the LBS and they worked on it today.
The guy at the desk also checked the rearwheel and mentioned the rearwheel bearing needs to be replaced as well.
BB is no problem, but because this is such an new bike, they have nothing in stock for the rearwheel bearing!
And that it might take up to a max. of 2 weeks for I will have my bike back!!!! I "need" my bike daily for my commute and reaaaaally need to train for a ride in May I have coming up where I will ride for 8 consecutive days of 155 km per day and at the end, ride up the Mt. Ventoux 3x.

Any suggestions?

HillRider

Only one suggestion of any use. Buy or borrow another bike.

Andrew R Stewart 

Agreed with the second/back up bike suggestion. The bike service industry isn't like the auto one where local suppliers can deliver parts to the shops within a couple of hours and/or there's a loaner/rental bike available. So people who depend daily on their bikes need a second one. Andy.

fietsbob

Service turn around is shorter when the service demand is Low.. after Xmas thru February . Once the weather is better the Service queue is longer .

fietsbob

there you go ... its not Just the Miles Its the weather conditions and contamination as a result of them that got to your Bearings..

Kopsis

Great reasons to have a "beater". Preferably something old enough to have a steel frame, friction shifters (or single speed), and traditional loose ball bearings in the hubs, headset, and BB. Doesn't have to be light, or pretty (or even the same type of bike) ... the key here is cheap and easy to service with readily available parts so you're never without a ride.

Thanas

News from the LBS, it should be fixed end of next week. My LBS is huge! If it would have been dura ace di2 or whatever other high end stuff, I'm sure they would gave had it on stock. I had 2 bikes, but sold them both for this bike. And am not planning to have 2 bikes again anytime soon. Thats why I got a CX bike. However, getting a singlespeed again would be cool! Loved mine when I had it.

For this saterday I'll likely rent a bike

Thanks for the replies

Andrew R Stewart 

Re: the bold comments (my making them bold). Actually the parts stocking pressures of a bike shop is quite the opposite. Every shop I have worked in (40+ years) has not found the economic demand and the ability to stock repair parts for the leading edge stuff beyond the simplest wear items. and even then often chose to stock the next lower tier stuff which is interchangeable. We (the LBS staff) usually think a rider of a 10,000 bike has a back up, also understands that it's not economically reasonable for the4 LBS to stock all the latest and greatest service parts in any more then the absolute minimum quantities and we also understand that they are not depending on their bikes to get to work.

It's the bread and butter bikes that are used for commuting, it's them that come into the shop in the numbers to justify the stocking of those repair parts, it's these riders who are depending on their bike for getting to work, school. It's these riders and bikes that most shops put the vast amount of their inventory management efforts to have needed service parts on hand. Even still with (as example) 8 common different 68mm shelled taper squared bottom bracket sizes, and the shop sells on average 4 or 5 a month, there will be a few days while the shop restocks the one size that the next rider needs sometimes. After all there are other riders who came in before "you" that might have needed the same as "you" did. Most shops 9and the supplier industry) find it too costly to place small restocking orders every day and instead do so once a week.

What we tell out customers is that to insure the minimum down time (morning drop off and evening pick up of a repair) we need to access the bike a week before the service to insure the on hand status of the parts. often these parts are already on hand and we just tag them and put them in the hold boxes. But often enough we need to order and receive them by the service appointment.

I am happy for the OP that the shop will be able to turn around the service sooner then he was expecting. Andy.

davidad

If you could fit fenders to the bike it would prevent spray from the front and back wheels on the BB. No bike bearing is sealed from water. If it gets wet often enough the water gets in and rusts the bearings.
New and improved is not necessarily good for the end user.

Thanas

The bike has fender mounting holes and I think even mounting holes for racks. I do have a clip on rear fender. But was not planning on putting on complete fenders. Maybe I have to rethink that.
On my MTB I had the same fender on the rear only, and no problems there.

Anyway. Spring has begun and for the coming months I think I'll be fine without fenders and these wheels. I have already contact a wheelbuilder that I've ordered a wheel from before. He told me that Fulcrum only use one sided sealed bearings, how smart for a CX bike? I do recognize this from my motorcycle, a dual sport, where Suzuki used single sided sealed bearings for the rear wheel. Will definitely upgrade the wheels at some point this year, perhaps after winter would be smart.

Regarding the stock of the LBS. Andrew's comment made perfect sense (or cents?). The problem was just that the wheels are of a new design, and therefore the service parts weren't readily available yet.

Thanks for the replies.

dabac

You might want to think that one through again. There's only one side of the bearing that faces out, so single-sided seal is fine.

(with the possible exception of one or another freehub design, where it MIGHT be possible to have contamination creep in between freehub body and hub, and maybe reach the exposed side of a bearing that way.)

jeffersonduang

My bicycle doesn't have that problem, maybe because I didn't cycling so much .

corwin1968

Recent experience with a very short-lived external BB leads me to think that if I depended on my bike for transportation, I would switch the crankset out for one that takes a cartridge BB. I would also buy the tools to install everything but the headset, learn how to overhaul my bike and I would keep essential spare parts (chain, brake pads, bottom bracket, cables, housing, etc....) on hand.

I'm a very casual recreational rider and I'm considering building up a stock of spare parts. It's going on a 2 week wait for ANY Hollowtech II BB. You'd think that bike shops would stock at least one line of this very common BB. If I could find a decent square taper crankset in black, that doesn't break the bank, I'd consider swapping.

wroomwroomoops

New and improved is motivated purely by profit for bicycle spare parts company.

What the problem used to be, with standard square taper cartridge BB: it lasted a long time and you could easily swap it out for any other manufacturer's BB. The bicycle frames didn't need to be changed because headset and BB could be easily replaced. Cranksets could be easily interchanged or replaced because square taper was/is ubiquitous. People weren't buying enough new bikes and bicycle frames. People were not locked into a single manufacturer.

All this was and is seen, by the many bicycle component manufacturers, as outrageous. So invent a fake "improved technology" that requires a new type of BB shell and hence a new frame. Bonus points if it lasts much shorter than the old cartridge BB. But hey, it's 17 micrograms lighter.
Oh, and what about those cranksets? Here come splined interfaces to the rescue - many different "standards", toss your old square taper cranksets away for the new hotness.

OK, I'm cranky, I admit. It upsets me that humans are so easily manipulated.

wroomwroomoops

In all my years of cycling, I had to replace a bottom bracket only once. Granted, I am a light cyclist (61 Kg) but still, a BB is not a component you need to have in stock necessarily. Tubes and patching kits, a few brake pads, one tire, one chain, that would be plenty.