5/22/15 7:24 AM

Some of you may remember I got a new bike last fall. Upon install, the Campy Chorus UT BB seemed relatively stiff and I attributed that to new seals and perhaps bearing cartridges packed full of grease.

However as the miles piled up the BB remained stiff. Not rough, not binding, just stiff. As an example, when flossing the cassette cogs with a rag, it was hard to get the cranks to turn with the force of the flossing rag as I got to the smaller cogs. I kept telling myself that I needed to pull the thing apart and inspect to be sure there was not some issue. That said, the design of the BB system is so simple I couldn't imagine what could be the problem other than a frame defect (threads not square, BB faces not square) and I didn't really want to contemplate that.

At any rate, the last time I cleaned the bike the BB was "free and easy" just as I am used to feeling with a Campy BB. It was like a switch had been flipped. The BB wasn't "a bit better" it went from pretty stiff to easy spinning. This occurred sometime between 1500 and 1800 miles. That seems a long time for bearing seals to wear in and it doesn't seem like something that would happen so quickly once they did wear in. I could see it "getting better with time" but it was more like "no change over 1500 miles and then all sorted in the next 300 miles."

I'm not curious enough right now to pull everything apart and try to study this, but I thought I would share and see if anybody had similar experiences with sealed bearings or thoughts on what might have happened.

I should note that we have had some hot weather recently (85F, 30C) though things "stay loose" even when it cools down into the 40s (F). Maybe that let the grease ooze out of the cartridge? I've noticed that my equally new Campy freehub got louder when the weather got warm (and stayed that way in cooler temps).

5/26/15 7:54 AM

[edit/update] A sealed bottom bracket should set and forget.... nevermind, I misread - my omission over your "remission"