Brought the bike to the local shop - good guys there. In an instant
they saw that the threading for the BB wasn't done properly - first
two thread lines were bad. They took the old BB out and reamed out the
frame. So much for Chinese bicycle craftsmanship, or at least the
factory that made the Hyper model I now have.

Also, the seat tube is not as specified (26.8), it's 28-something.
Needed a shim to make it fit. Only 5 bucks, but still, it shouldn't be
necessary. Now, I need to deal with the folks at Dan's Comp regarding
a bad bearing that was needlessly stripped due to the faulty
craftsmanship of the frame.

More to come...

On 4 Feb 2006 21:39:01 -0800, "Nate Knutson"
wrote:


Bob McCarthy wrote:
Both the frame and the bearing cup state they are Euro BB, but the
fit just isn't there. TRhe cup is just too big to fit easily. Are
there different thread sizes for Euro BB's?

Nope. Euro is always the same 1.375" x 24tpi size, in either a
nominally 68mm or 73mm wide shell.

Part of the background here is that "Euro" is BMX's word for the
regular ISO bottom brackets found on most current adult bikes. There
are and have been numerous other somewhat similar threaded BB sizes, of
which only Italian is still somewhat common (used mostly on a few road
bikes).

Italian is slightly larger (36mm x 24tpi, about 1 mm wider than ISO).
Since this is a race frame, one thing could be going on here is that
you've found yourself with an Italian BB cartridge. Also, both cups
thread in clockwise on Italian BB's.

BTW, thanks so much for your info; we really appreciate it.

We're having some success getting them in to the frame, but they don't
seem to fit too well. The cartridges are reverse threaded (one CW, the
other CCW) Here is the crank bought:
http://www.danscomp.com/cgi-bin/haze...IL&item=451023

So those are normal Euro cranks.

First of all, grease the BB threads if you haven't already.

It's somewhat easy to cross-thread BB cups. Be careful about this - a
good tip is to always start threading in the cup by hand. If it's
possible that you've done something to damage the threads, like
cross-thread a cup, be really cautious. If this is the case or the
threads seem excessively rough in general, it would probably be worth
it to have a shop look at it and chase the threads using a special tool
(if they deem it a good idea). This would cost around $15 and make the
cups go in and out easily.

Keep in mind that crossthreaded BB cups can really mess up a frame,
especially an aluminum one, which I'm pretty sure yours is.

OTOH, it's very common for BB cups to have much more friction than
ideal going in. Obviously, it helps to have a good feel for this.

Also, if the cups are pre-treated with a threadlocking compound, that
will add a lot of friction.

My apologies for the terminolgy. I meant the tube that is attached to
the seat. Both the tube manufacturer and the bike manufacturer state
the seat tube size is 26.8, but there's just too much room in the
tube.

You do have a seat collar for the bike, right?

Er, we will tomorrow. Since we bought the frame separately from all
the other parts, no 'assembly' instructions came with any of the
parts. We don't know what we're missing. In other words, we don't know
what we don't know.

Again, thanks!