One of the worst jobs to do on the bike is swapping the bottom bracket. Its not that bad a job, if it goes well. But it’s in an area of the bike that gets a lot of filth and a lot of stress. The result of that, after a year or two of pedalling at 1,000s miles a year, is parts that can be tough to shift.
The bottom bracket on my training bike has worn out (grindy, noisy at times, some side to side movement) so it was time to swap it out. A cheap job, and a lot easier nowadays with sealed units and all that. Yeah, right.
My crank extractor stripped the threads out of my chainset instead of popping it off the axle. Uh oh. The other side came off fine. I worked around it and replaced the bottom bracket itself, with the chainset still attached to the old axle. Whatever I tried I could not get the chainset off the old bottom bracket axle. And I tried a club hammer. And I tried heating it up. And yes, lots of lube. It didn’t shift. Because of the tapered nature of the axle, if it shifts a tiny bit it should start to pop off. It wouldn’t budge. The only thing that I managed to successfully split apart was my thumb. With the hammer.
I think this might end up being a King Arthur-like sword in the stone thing in my garage. Whoever can pull the crank from the axle will inherit my kingdom of boxes of second hand bike bits!
So, a cheap and simple job has changed to an expensive job. A new chainset, and as you can’t really get square taper fit cranks any more, new bottom bracket cups too. Great. After all these years you’d think I’d be getting used to this. I did kind of predict it, I guess.
And sorry, I cheated with the photos. They’re from a previous BB swap (that went well). Except for the thumb injury.
