jamesdak 

Ok, am I suddenly stupid? Installing a NOS Sugino Aero Mighty crank with the stock BB. 11 1/4" loose bearings on each side. Asymmetric spindle so long side on the crank side. When I put it all together and get ready for setting preload with the adjustable cup the spindle keeps binding after about 4 full rotations in either direction. Cups are not moving. What the heck am I messing? I even pulled a bearing out of each side with no difference in the symptom.

Dave Mayer

? First, the number of bearings should not make a difference. Use the full complement of 11 1/4" balls. If you were using ball retainers, discard them.
What do you mean by 4 revolutions? When you are getting ready for final preload adjustment, 10 degrees of rotation makes the difference between the spindle locked up and too loose.

jamesdak 

So , with the fixed cup tight and the adjusting cup loose so that there is still side by side play in the spindle. Then without allowing the the adjustable cup to move at all I spin the spindle. After about 4 full rotation of the spindle it will totally bind. If I turn the spindle in the other direction same thing. It seems like is something wasn't faced right or the new spindle was somehow jacked up that would show with one full rotation.

I'l probably just doing something stupid as is usually the case any more. I'm so senile I need to quit trying to work on bikes anymore.....

Andrew R Stewart 

Could it be that you have dislodged a bearing from the "ring" of them? Can you observe the axle exiting the hole in the cups and see if it remains centered within the hole, or "walks" about the hole?

Poor shell facing generally won't result in a totally locked movement, but more like a snugging up of effort to spin the axle at the binding point and some slop at the loose points. But usually the axle will still be able to spin with only slightly more hand pressure.

The description sure sounds like some bit is acting like a wheel chock and getting trapped between the balls and tracks. Andy

Dave Mayer

I volunteer at a high-volume big city bike Co-op. I've seen everything.

The one time I did experience this type of problem was when one of our less experienced mechs repacked a hub with too many ball bearings. The wheel alternative was wobbly and then one revolution later it locked up.

Last week, we saw a hub that had been repacked with too-small balls, such that the balls were riding on the lip of the hub cone, and not the bearing track. We've also seen hubs repacked with a mix of different sizes of balls. Go figure.

We've also had hubs that require different size balls left and right (an old Campy cassette hub), but the mechanic did not figure this out. All kinds of adjustment fun followed..

Dave Mayer

One more thing: when you install the balls, did you use enough thick grease to keep the balls in place during re-assembly, and did you make double-sure that all the balls were positioned properly in the cups? It may be possible that a single ball is jammed up in a place that it should not be.

jamesdak 

Yeah, I seem to have the bearing in place for sure on the drive side but maybe ones slipping out on the non-drive side when I can't see it. Had it apart 4 times now, cleaned regrease, bearings, etc. To me it can only be a bearing slipping out of place. Gonna dig up some caged ones and see what happens. Sometimes I just struggle with the simplest things. Worked on dozens of these with no issues but my wandering old mind makes me question everything I do anymore.

squirtdad

caged ones are not terrible, and do save aggravation. I have in the past used really sticky grease Phil's and lots of it instead of just enough and then done a lot of contortions to minimize gravity working against me. Good luck

SpedFast

Just going to throw this out there--when you turn the crank you're not also turning the adjusting nut? I know you mention that it didn't seem to matter which direction you turned the crank, but you did mention that you started turning it with everyfthing loose which probably means you haven't installed the lock nut or it's still loose too, at least until you turn the crank, then everything gets tight. Watch that the adjusting nut doesn't turn with the crank and see what happens. Good luck

jamesdak 

Yeah, that is not what's happening. The adjusting cup isn't moving at all. It's got to be a bearing sneaking out when I put it together....I think....LOL!

jamesdak 

Well......lessoned learned I think. Dug into my stash of old BB for some caged bearings. Cleaned, regreased and swapped these in. Seem to work just fine now. Just a little surprised by how far the adjusting cup still sticks out once pretty much adjusted.


Does this look right?

79pmooney

I like using marine grease to assemble BBs. Balls in that stuff are going nowhere. Makes regular Phil grease look like water. (I love how long bearings go before needing repacking also.)

Mr. 66

That does look far out, how is the chain line?

jamesdak 

Seems ok with just a test fit. Velobase says a 118 spindle which this is. I went with this NOS crank and BB cause I thought it was going to be a no drama solution. Long side of the spindle is on the drive side.

For the heck of it I also tried an old Dura Ace 7400 series BB I have and got pretty much the same result. The BB shell measures 68mm so I guess the adjusting cup sticking out so far is normal?

jamesdak 

Well.....freak!

JohnDThompson for the win. Found this little tibit after many searches.
"9-ball retainers generally have the open side facing into the cup. 11-ball retainers have the open side facing the cone on the spindle. It appears you had it backwards. Loose balls always work, so no compelling need to re-do anything at this point."

I was installing an 11 bearing cage in the direction for a 9 bearing which is what I kept finding as the right orientation with everything I searched. Now the adjusting cup appears to be well seated as normal.

sd5782 

Yep, learned the same lesson on a Superbe crank. Now ANY caged bearing I put in anywhere, I always test in both orientations just to check.

Road Fan

No, to my mind it does not! Several possibilities, just to throw out all the possibilities:

BB shell too short for the spindle, by a few mm. I have an ancient frame which after some totally faulty BB facing finally was corrected by an LBS into a pair of parallel faces, but only 66 mm wide! -- grr.

Spindle too long between the bearing races, perhaps intended for 70 mm Italian-shaped BB system rather than 68 mm English, or maybe even for a 73 mm MTB?

Also, the cups might not match the spindle. Vintage Campy thick cups have the ball tracks a few millimeters closer together than Campy thin cups. They can't take the same spindles.

Balls too big or too many?

Balls too small and WAYY too many.

Old time books on wrenching, such as Glenn's from 1973 and leaning toward "production" LBS mechanics rather than home wrenches, seem to assume caged bearings are the right solution. One can see why, from this discussion. I've had similar problems in BB, headset, and hub rebuilds. I usually go back and put in thick beds of grease to hold the balls in the right places. I guess pro's don't need to do trial assembly, but I sure do!

Ol' Tom Cuthbertson talked about count the number of bearings you took out and WRITE IT DOWN. I tried to do this early in my bike days, and the strategy worked until I dropped the cup of balls and ... never found them all! Now I'm a little better at seeing if the number of balls is correct, but ... always still a little bit nervous about if I did it right!

And James, we are probably about the same in age!