by Digger90 on Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:32 pm
by freehub on Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:18 pm
We maybe talking past one another bit and there is a level of conflation going on. I hear you...but...the picture you show of the trashed BB30 was due to a poorly set up BB with trashed bearing(s). That is why Cannondale did not take it back. It was customer abuse. You can debate that all you like but that is the reality. I can post many pictures of BB's that were abused. If you run too tight a crankset preload, and run bearings low on grease, it will trash the bearings and they will seize and rotate int their bores and result in the picture you show. That is fact. Too loose a crankset preload can manifest the same condition. Low quality non angular contact bearings are more sensitive to crank preload and tend to fail sooner.
As to Cannondale quality control which you witness every day, I have no quibble with you. No doubt they could provide more perfect product. I doubt it is as much a metalurgy deficiency or variance as much as dimensional variance. Reality is, with loctite even a a slip fit can be tamed with BB30 where bores are ovalized or oversize from the factory. Without loctite and unmaintained BB30's with poor quality bearings, now you have an accident in waiting that no doubt you see in your shop more often than you like which you blame on Cannondale and BB30 design itself but reality is...the customer has some stake in the blame as well. I can tell you that I have repaired countless BB30 bikes that bike shops completely f-ed up because they had no idea what they were doing. If you don't use Loctite and bearings aren't serviced in 5k intervals and even more often if riding a lot in rain and/or crank preload is improperly set, a failure is imminent. With proper set up, high quality bearings and vigilant maintenance, the vast majority of BB30 bikes from all top manufacturers work perfectly.
Seriously, I don't understand how anyone could post this and maintain a straight face.
Are you seriously saying poorly setup BB, too tight preload, bearings being run low on grease, too loose crankset preload, using glue to install BB's... it's all down to customer 'abuse'?
If that's what it takes to set up BB30 properly... WTF??
What was so wrong with 68mm threaded BB's?
We don't live in an engineering lab - we live in the real world and BB30 is total, utter cr@p. Cannondale are the arch culprit.