pmt

You need a Park BBT-22 and an impact wrench. That'll take it right out without damage.

southpawboston

The BBT-22 I have. The impact wrench I don't.

reptilezs

ghetto style with a dead blow. you need some help though. crank on it with the breaker bar and have a buddy with a deadblow beat on it while you apply tension

Reynolds 

I've seen those "reversed" BB cartridges ocasionally. As said above, the threading is the same as regular BBs, only the cartridge goes in from the non drive side.
As for the splines, they are very strong IMO. I've used a 60cm cheater bar on them, the BB made a loud sound when it loosened, the splines were OK.

onespeedbiker

I would be amazed if you broke the splines on a BB tool regardless of the length of a breaker/cheater bar; I have bent 4' lengths of rigid electrical pipe without injuring the tool or BB and finally got it out using a 5 foot section of 2" galvanize water pipe (easiest if you have a rolling frame; have a friend hold the bike and position the pipe about 3 feet off the ground so you can push it down to unscrew). As long as you have metal spines on one side use them.

jim hughes

Pure, absolute corporate evil.

bobotech

What do you mean? I'm just wondering why the hate?

jim hughes

I'm not an engineer but I'm pretty sure the plastic cup is typically on the non-drive side because it's weaker. Regardless, putting it on the drive side obviously confuses even experienced mechanics, causing error and frustration. Just to reduce their assembly costs - this is how a top component maker bases its decisions?

pmt

Ok, so take the frame and BBT-22 over to your car mechanic and have him pop it off. Or go on eBay and get an impact wrench for $20-$40.

Simonius

The LP-25 was a very high volume and cheaply made item.
I read that there was a significant incidence of bearings needing tightening early on, and being cheapo they must have needed it later too. This could be achieved with the special tool rather than by replacing the whole BB.
I don't know why was it reversed. Maybe so that adjustment only required removing the left crank, rather than the more complicated right crank with chain and front D.

Lawrence08648

My LBS has an impact gun. I'm just a backyard mechanic and I have an impact gun. Why doesn't or didn't your LBS use or have an impact gun? Bring your frame to your car mechanic or tire shop and ask him to do it with his impact. The impact works well. Couple of weeks ago I had a frame that I couldn't bust loose the cup with a breaker bar and pipe and used my impact and it worked. I was in the LBS shop couple of weeks ago and he had to use his impact gun. On a hard bb cup, I hold the socket tight with a bolt.

southpawboston

I'll check with an auto mechanic this weekend, not a bad idea. Personally, it's not worth it for me to buy an impact wrench just for this project. I'd also need an air compressor, for which I don't have any other immediate need. Sometimes, it's worth it to just pay a few bucks to others for a service that you don't expect to need very often. I'm just a shade-tree bike mechanic but this is the first BB I haven't been able to remove. I've probably removed about 20 so far.

bobotech

Welcome to the world of car mechanics. Holy hell, the decisions made in the name of cheap assembly line costs. Stuff that might take only an hour on one car to repair might take 10 on another car because the car company found out that installing xyz widget on a different yet inaccessible spot after the car is completed. I remember that doing a valve cover gasket job on a early 90's Infiniti Q45 was ridiculously hard and long. Something like 6 or 8 book hours.

Totally agree with you on your points.

pmt

Why would you need an air compressor for an electric impact wrench? Like I posted above, they're $20-$40 and you can use it for many other things.

Retro Grouch 

That was going to be my suggestion too because I've done it a few times and it's never failed me. If you try, be sure to take a minute to think about what way you need to twist the frame.

mechBgon

If the plastic cup can survive being installed at the bike factory by someone with an air impact wrench, it'll hold up on either side of your bike's BB shell. And in real life, they hold up just fine. I haven't noticed experienced mechanics getting confused by them... their orientation is really obvious when installing one, since they're labelled with left & right ends. And if it's in a frame, well, we all know which way an English-threaded BB threads in and out.

himespau 

Be sure to let us know how you finally get it out.

bobotech

Well i was thoroughly confused only because I'm a novice bike mechanic and have never dealt with them before and expected the non-drive side to be easy to remove and expected the drive side to be hard to remove.

So I didn't even look at the drive side when I went to take it out. I didn't realize there would be a plastic cup on the drive side. I just figured that the metal cup on the non-drive side was a normal metal spacer cup like some better cartridge brackets. Finally I got annoyed at how hard it was to remove so I switched to the other side and it popped out with surprising ease and then I realized it was "backwards" and then changed my application of torque to the non-drive side which then broke free.

It was just totally unexpected. Kind of like how I found out yesterday at the coop that older Peugeot french crank arms have a weird pedal thread pitch that isn't the same as english 1/2 or 9/16ths.

krome

Generally speaking, an electric impact wrench will not produce as much torque as a pneumatic one.

For the record, I don't have an air compressor either, instead I have a 20# CO2 cylinder with regulator (it holds 20# of CO2, it weighs much more). For me, the portability and low maintenance of the CO2 cylinder/regulator beats an air compressor. If I used it a lot more that I do, I might need an air compressor. As it is, I get at least a year out of the 20lbs. of CO2, sometimes two, doing work on my own car and bikes. It will drive an impact wrench just fine intermittently, it tends to chill the bottle (reducing the pressure) if used for long periods.

gyozadude

Even short, quick impacts will help loosen nasty bottom bracket cups. About 2 years ago, in Costco Canada, Richmond B.C., I saw a closeout on some electric impact wrenches designed for removing lug nuts for ladies that can't bust off the lug nuts with the supplied lug wrench in the emergency flat kits of most cars. Just $19 each. I was stunned at the price and on a whim got 3 of them. They aren't the "tink...tink...tink...tink" type of impact wrench. Instead, they wind up, "whirrrrr....zzzzztt... tink!" and then repeats. Runs on 12VDC with a cigarette lighter adapter for ones car.

But that impact makes quick work on any lug nut I tried it against, and works great on stubborn BB cups to get them loosened (or tightened). And no tennis elbow trying to man-handle a 6 ft cheater bar that weights 70 lbs by itself. Give that a try, or spray some Pepsi or Coke into the BB and keep it wet overnight and then try to loosen the metal cup. Both ways have worked for me.

sprince

Ghetto style has worked for me many times. A long bar, not too much force, and some gentle tapping on the bar with a ball peen hammer.

southpawboston

Success!!! Thanks for all the tips, especially the impact wrench tip! After several more attempts, including taking the frame to my LBS to have them give it their best try (and paying them $15), no luck. So I brought it to my corner auto repair, and asked them to use their air impact wrench with my Park tool and 1" socket. Took a few bursts before it budged, but then it turned. Took a total of about five seconds. No damage to threads or tools. BB shell is conventionally threaded and the threads are fine, just dirty. I'll chase them and clean them up before installing a new cartridge.

This forum rocks!

mechBgon

Excellent

FBinNY 

Glad you have it out, now look at the cause of your grief. Water in the BB. I know I've been sounding like a broken record on this subject for 20+ years, but take the time to drill and maintain a weep hole to drain water that will unavoidable accumulate in the BB shell over time.

Kimmo

Amen.

And yay for rattleguns!