Crankset and Bottom Bracket technology

Chalo Colina said:

Qui si parla Campagnolo said:

For those of you that say the square taper breaks a lot...bunny

turds.

Once in a lifetime is too much. These aren't bottle bosses or
derailleur hangers, you know.

Quoted message said:

If the likes of Zabel, Cipo,
Mcquewen(sp?), and other big sprinters can use this old fashioned

stuff in

Quoted message said:

the past, so can you.

Sorry, you're wrong. I can't wear their pants or shoes, I can't ride
their bikes, and I shouldn't use their cranks. And neither should
anyone else here who weighs 150% or more than what a pro racer does.

Heck, _they_ only use their cranks for part of one racing season. If
they wanted their $5000 bikes to last a good long time, they might
discover that they break their square taper cranks too.

So tell me... what other bike part is made of 5mm thick hardened steel,
just so it doesn't break immediately? None.

If I designed a handlebar, or a seatpost, or a fork steerer so skinny
that it had to be made out of 5mm thick hardened steel to last at all,
and it failed by snapping clean off, you would acknowledge that it was
a retarded design. Well guess what? The square taper BB is a retarded
design.

It's about time that the industry tried to fix it. I don't know
whether the recent crop of overhyped junk is an effective solution, but
it couldn't be worse than the square taper unless it was rigged to
explode.

It would be useful to have S-N curves for square taper BB spindles.

Since I use cartridge BB's on recumbent bicycles, I am only highly
loading the spindle for a small fraction of my riding time. I expect
that the strains I typically impose on the spindle are on a portion of
the S-N curve where the bearings will wear out and require BB
replacement long before spindle fatigue becomes an issue.

For Chalo, who rides upright bicycles where he will apply close to
maximum loads just standing on one foot or pedaling standing, he is
likely on a portion of the S-N curve where he would have to replace
spindles every few thousand miles to have an adequate factor of safety
against fatigue failure. Therefore, the design is not adequate for his
use by general standards of normal component life.

--
Tom Sherman - Near Rock Island

Tom-<< Or roughly 40% of the weight of our square taper spindle breaking
friend, Chalo Colina. >><BR><BR>

Yep, Chalo is indeed on the edge of the bell curve but a $400, new design crank
is NOT the answer for the other 99.9% of the riders out there.

Peter Chisholm
Vecchio's Bicicletteria
1833 Pearl St.
Boulder, CO, 80302
(303)440-3535
http://www.vecchios.com
"Ruote convenzionali costruite eccezionalmente bene"

The spin on freewheel was a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
Friction gear shifting was a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
single pivot brakes were a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
Downtube shifters were a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
Wheel wing nuts were a problem campagnolo didn't need to solve.

begin quoting Qui si parla Campagnolo <[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

Tom:

Quoted message said:

Or roughly 40% of the weight of our square taper spindle breaking
friend, Chalo Colina.

Yep, Chalo is indeed on the edge of the bell curve but a $400, new design
crank is NOT the answer for the other 99.9% of the riders out there.

It won't be $400 if 99.9% of us or even 10% of us use it; hell, ISIS
cranks aren't all $400 now, or anything like it.
--
David Damerell <[email hidden]> Distortion Field!
Today is Leicesterday, January.

Quoted message said:

The spin on freewheel was a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
Friction gear shifting was a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
single pivot brakes were a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
Downtube shifters were a problem shimano didn't need to solve.
Wheel wing nuts were a problem campagnolo didn't need to solve.

None of those really *were* big problems, except the wing nuts which
were kind of [censored] (I used them for a while on an old 10 speed bike, as a
kind of anti-tech statement). Incidentally, dual pivot brakes were
around well before Shimano brought them to the mass market.

Quoted message said:

Assuming the q distance is the same between square taper cranks with
the bearings inside the bottom bracket lug and the new stype cranks
with the outboard bearings, the crank arms do not angle out as much
with the outboard bearing cranks. They are more straight up and down.
A side affect of this is people who pedal duck footed, pigeon toed,
heels moving back and forth, will hit their ankles and heels on the
side of the arm of the outboard bearing cranks.

Question: why didn't Shimano go for something based on the existing
standard BMX-size BB shell and solve the problem once and for all? Then
they could have had huge bearings and spindles with no increase in Q or
bruised ankles. The framebuilders soon caught up with head tube STI
stops, didn't they?

Chalo ranted:

Blah, blah, blah, and more blah from an individual whose weight is more
than three standard deviations out.

Here's my yada yada yada: I weigh significantly less than Chalo, but
significantly more than "average". Have yet to break any BB spindle.
Neither have any of my fat friends, riding campy and shimano square
tapers, weighing in the 200 - 280 lb range. His n of 1 has little
effect on the much larger n that the mfrs cater to.

Chalo is just mad at the world because of the disparity between what
his physicality requires of bike mfrs and what they are willing to
invest money to develop.

While I may sound callous, let me say this - I will never be upper
management because I am balding and would never be considered tall.
And my predicted age of death is two years earlier than a right-hander
because of subtle biases toward right-handers in all sorts design.
So wah, frickin' wah. We all get screwed in some fashion.

App

Qui si parla Campagnolo said:

For those of you that say the square taper breaks a lot...bunny

turds.

I have broken a Campy square spindle (Record). Campy warranteed the
part, to their credit. But I don't think they'd have warranteed any
replacement parts for me, like a new shoulder blade after I went over
the bars. Luckily I didn't need one.

James

I agree alot of these advances Shimano didn't invent. Shimano perfected
them. Thats the point. If
Shimano & others never pushed different ways of doing things we would
still be riding 1970's
tech. Not that the old stuff was all that bad , I love my stable of
antique bikes, but todays bikes
are so much better! To Campys credit they wait until someone else has
perfected an idea before
adopting it. Sometimes improving it. It won't be long before they have
their own crank bb combo.

Quoted message said:

The spin on freewheel was a problem shimano didn't need to solve....

Freehubs put the bearings in a better location for axle support; bent
and/or broken axles are less frequent with freehubs. It is also much
easier to remove a cassette from a freehub that it is to remove a
freewheel (especially with the tools one can readily carry on a bicycle).

I am happy to be freewheel free.

--
Tom Sherman - Earth

Quoted message said:

I weigh significantly less than Chalo, but
significantly more than "average". Have yet to break any BB spindle.
Neither have any of my fat friends, riding campy and shimano square
tapers, weighing in the 200 - 280 lb range.

Just so you know, I broke my first spindle (OEM Shimano) when I weighed
around 240 pounds. I broke my second one (Shimano BB-M730, Deore XT)
when I weighed about 260 lbs. Shortly thereafter, I stopped using
square tapers and thus have had no opportunity to break more of them.

240 pounds-- how many standard deviations out is that anymore?

Jobst Brandt has broken at least a couple of square taper spindles, and
he probably weighs less than I did when I broke mine.

Consider yourself warned. Continue to use your retarded square taper
cranks if you don't mind facing the consequences. They cost me six
teeth and $8000 worth of dental work in 1994, so I am done with them.
I still tweeze the occasional bone fragment out of my gums to this day.
Think about that when you stand to pedal.

Chalo Colina

Tom Sherman said:

It is also much easier to remove a cassette from a freehub that
it is to remove a freewheel (especially with the tools one can
readily carry on a bicycle).

What, you don't carry a vise, a workbench, a six-pack of beer, and a
perverse sense of humor with you on your bike?

I still prefer freewheel hubs though, and I probably will until someone
makes a cassette hub with a 15+mm axle, with adjustable
center-to-flange offset.

However, since I just put my first ever 9-speed cassette on my only
cassette-hubbed bike, I'll acknowledge that having a whole mess of
sprockets between 11 and 34 teeth is pretty nice. It's like having the
benefits of a double crank without putting up with a &$@*%# front
derailleur.

Chalo Colina

Zog The Undeniable said:

Question: why didn't Shimano go for something based on the existing
standard BMX-size BB shell and solve the problem once and for all?

Then

Quoted message said:

they could have had huge bearings and spindles with no increase in Q

or

Quoted message said:

bruised ankles.

That's an excellent question. Between Shimano's Bullseye-clone cranks
and new BB shell standards like ISIS Overdrive and FSA's Megatech, it
appears that manufacturers are bending over backwards to avoid the
obvious solution.

Chalo Colina

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Consider yourself warned. Continue to use your retarded square taper
cranks if you don't mind facing the consequences. They cost me six
teeth and $8000 worth of dental work in 1994, so I am done with them.
I still tweeze the occasional bone fragment out of my gums to this

day.

Quoted message said:

Think about that when you stand to pedal.

Chalo Colina

<snip>

I have sympathy for your accident. I can understand why you would rage
against the source of your accident. But if it were an epidemic the
problem would have been addressed long ago.

240 is above the 95th percentile for a 25 year old male. Not three SD,
but right around two. Which means that even at that time, you were
heavier than 95%+ of the male population, probably heavier than 98% of
the population as a whole and probably at the fringes of working range
for the design at that time as well.

Thanks for the cautionary tale, however. I will inspect my BB more
frequently. $8000 worth of dental work and bone chips in my gums is
not an attractive prospect.

App

70 pounds on the freehub and never a bend in the wheels mfg axle

Tom Sherman said:

Freehubs put the bearings in a better location for axle support; bent
and/or broken axles are less frequent with freehubs. It is also much
easier to remove a cassette from a freehub that it is to remove a
freewheel (especially with the tools one can readily carry on a bicycle).

But with the latest DA stuff they've put the bearings in the wrong place
again. There's a bigger axle which is supposed to compensate.

Zog The Undeniable said:

But with the latest DA stuff they've put the bearings in the wrong place
again. There's a bigger axle which is supposed to compensate.

A few years ago Shimano hinted that the bicycle frame needed to be
re-thought before any further component improvements could be made. I
got the idea they were talking about a new standard for bottom bracket
shells - one that would allow both bigger spindles and large internal
bearings.
--
My bike blog:
http://diabloscott.blogspot.com/

Chalo Colina said:

Tom Sherman said:

It is also much easier to remove a cassette from a freehub that
it is to remove a freewheel (especially with the tools one can
readily carry on a bicycle).

What, you don't carry a vise, a workbench, a six-pack of beer, and a
perverse sense of humor with you on your bike?

Plenty of people on Usenet will consider the latter a given. 😉

--
Tom Sherman - Earth

Chalo said:

That's an excellent question. Between Shimano's Bullseye-clone

cranks

Quoted message said:

and new BB shell standards like ISIS Overdrive and FSA's Megatech, it
appears that manufacturers are bending over backwards to avoid the
obvious solution.

Chalo Colina

Except for Cannondale:
http://www.cannondale.com/bikes/innovation/archive/sihollowgram.html
Jeff

Quoted message said:

Chalo said:

Between Shimano's Bullseye-clone cranks
and new BB shell standards like ISIS Overdrive and FSA's Megatech,

it

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

appears that manufacturers are bending over backwards to avoid the
obvious solution.

Except for Cannondale:
http://www.cannondale.com/bikes/innovation/archive/sihollowgram.html

I believe that's one of the dead-end [censored] standards I'm talking
about. Why not use an American shell, which has been supported longer
than any of us have been alive, and will still be supported after we
are all dead?

If they did that, then they could sell their Hollowgram cranks to all
kinds of people who would never consider riding a Cannondale.

Of course, that would make it possible to fit Hollowgram cranks on a
Huffy, or Wald one-piece cranks on a Six13 Team Replica. Can't have
that. :^)

Chalo Colina