My mate is restoring an RC100. It’s got the 2 piece Bullseye cranks and a 100mm bottom bracket shell. But no bearings. It looks from the inside of the shell that the bearings just pressed in directly. Measurements suggest the bearings need to be 38mm OD and 22mm ID, which don’t seem to be available to buy anywhere.

Anyone got a solution?

I was in a similar situation a few years back and by absolute fluke found some original bearings for sale on the Bay. My other alternative according to an engineering friend was to have the crank reduced on a machine so that it would fit readily available bearings. He kind of made out that it would be an easy straight forward process with the correct equipment. I’m sure there’s others on here with the relevant knowledge to confirm?

Go to Retrobike, do not pass Go, do not collect £200.

I know there’s a few Pace experts on there, at least one guy on there who supplied Pace fork bits who used to work for them IIRC.

I’ve pointed him at retrobike so he should have asked on there by now.

An article on velocipide suggested machining the axle down slightly to fit a BMX BB , maybe that’s what your mate did sandboy? Happily, there is an engineering company in the village so it probably could be done very easily.

I believe thats what he suggested. I never took him up on it as I managed to find some originals. I remember him saying that it would only need a very small reduction in order to fit some commonly found bearings. I’m pretty sure i read on Retrobike that its been done before.

As the username suggests I have an RC100 and faced this issue maybe 20 years ago. I stripped the frame down for a respray and chucked the bearings away as they were rough thinking I will just buy some new ones. Low and behold you couldn’t get them anywhere not even Pace or Bullseye. So newly painted frame dispatched to a little engineering place in Isleworth who machined out the BB to accept off the shelf bearings supplied by Pace, fortunately they didn’t scratch the frame. Next problem if I remember correctly was the axle on the Bullseye’s was now too small a diameter for the new bearing, not much but enough to mean it wouldnt work. So again said engineering shop added some metal to the axle which then actually made it too thick so I remember sitting at home removing some material by hand with wet and dry as I didnt have a lathe. Sounds a bit rough and ready doing that by hand but never had a problems with the bearings after that, in fact they are still fitted now. What I did have a problem with was snapping Bullseye cranks so the drive side arm and axle got changed a few years later. I thought I would have to go through all this again but strangely it actually just fitted so maybe Bullseye revised the axle diameter. All this was a real long time ago but I am convinced the original bearings were an off the shelf bearing inside some kind of adapter to make the od fit the weird size bb shell.

Try asking on Facebook “Pace MTB Owners Group”.

Cheers, will pass this all on.