Hey, everybody welcome back to this week's Tuesday. Tip where we're going to be talking about this little guy right here
So if you're watching this video right now, and you're asking yourself
What is that thing or you're watching this and you know what it is
And you know that you don't have it in your bike you're going to want to watch this video
I actually don't have one of these in my bike right now as you could probably guess because I'm holding in my hand
But recently I learned that there's a couple good reasons
Why you definitely need to [have] this in your bike? So while I talk about that?
I'm going to go back here, and I'm going to take my bike apart
I'm going to put this in and I'll do some voiceover, so let's get into it, [so]
What exactly is a bottom bracket spacer and what does it do?
It's a spacer that goes between bottom bracket bearings to reduce strain by giving the bearings something to always tighten against
So to start was [a] bottom bracket bearing composed of it's an inner race
Steel balls and an outer race the outer race is what touches the frame [in] the inner race is what goes around the spindle?
It's worth mentioning, [too] that the bearing is only meant to spin around one axis
Since bearings can only be pushed into the frame so far before the outer race is stopped
Having no spacer means that tightening the cranks pushes the inner bearing races toward the center of [the] frame and each other
Basically the outer race cannot move so the force on the inner race is constantly trying to separate the bearing this is called side loading
As bearings start to wear the tolerances between the steel balls and the races grow
Allowing them to move independently of each other if there's any movement between the bearing parts
You will most likely hear it when you pedal on top of this
Having no spacer allows peddling to put other forces on the bearings each rotation of the cranks puts both forward and backward
Force on each bearing during the entire rotation and tries to make the inner bearing races wobble off axis [in]
general this makes for an unnecessary drag on the bearings when pedaling with
Cranks getting beefier and spindles growing bearing size has had to shrink and there's less Flex in the cranks or spindle
Unless you have a bottom bracket spacer between the bearings less flex equals more stress on these smaller bearings when pedaling
Bottom bracket spacers remove the different forces on the bearings by placing something between the inner bearing races
This means that when the cranks are tightened there's something to tighten against
Rather than constantly pushing the inner races toward each other with nothing to tighten against the Force is
[distributed] evenly and the bearings are not as stressed by tightening or pedaling
Imagine it like this if you have just an axle in your fork dropouts with no hub and you tighten axle nuts against the dropouts
The Dropouts would have nothing to tighten against and would bend toward each other add in the hub and the empty space is filled
giving the Dropouts something tighten against
So not only will having a spacer eliminate side load and quiet your creaky bottom bracket
It will also make for a smoother pedaling experience
Another thing this can be good for is the ability to have tight cranks and still be able to crank flip
With the inner bearing races in alignment with the outer
Races and tight against something on both sides the tightness of the cranks doesn't have an effect on how they spin
So if you've ever wondered why your cranks won't spin with a loose chain and without loosening your cranks. This is probably the reason
Some frames have different with bottom bracket shells that will require [different] width spacers
However if you buy a complete bottom bracket setup
It should come with everything you need for the different widths Shell's
common with our 68 and 73 millimeters
My profile bottom bracket came with both a sixty eight millimeter spacer as well as a five millimeter
spacer to add together to Make 73
Millimeters to know what with your bottom bracket is simply measure the Tube from end to end as shown and another side note
odyssey has a great write-up from 2004 on this topic on their site that I'll link below in the description, [so]
What do you think our bottom bracket space is important is it worth the trouble taking out your bearings?
Or do you not care?
[I] will say that it was
Absolutely worth it for me and only took about 15 minutes to get done
By putting the spacer in between my bottom bracket bearings and oiling the chain all creaking was completely removed
Pedaling became smoother and crank flips spun much easier all within a matter of seconds
Let me know what you guys think in the comments below so that's going to be it guys
I hope you found this video useful and I hope you learn something. Thanks for watching we'll catch you in the next one goodbye