<curse mode>In fairness, my Cannondale road bike has nearly 10000km on one press-fit BB and no sign of it failing yet.
I don’t know what specific bearings are in there as I’ve never needed to take ’em out :-)</curse mode>

The PF30 was the thing that almost stopped me buying my Camber (and a bunch of other bikes I fancied).

In the end took the plunge and I’m hoping the Hope unit I just bought with its replaceable bearings will see the bike out.

Got to applaud specialised for actually dealing with the problem. I suspect ultimately it’s a sales driven decision but as someone who likes their bikes it gets my vote.

Last night I swapped a cartridge bb in my cheap and nasty road bike. Soooo easy. Whole job took about 15 minutes including finding the tools. The external bb’s are quick too but ime at the cheaper end they are much more prone to early failure/just as failure prone as OEM BB30 stuff.

so how come bb30 seem so much worse than bb92-

isnt it just a slightly different diameter?

Original SRAM PF30 BB in my Enduro was absolute crap. Went through two of them in 6 months. No creaking but they seized up. Been on a Praxis BB now for almost a year and it’s been great. Zero creaks and runs super smooth. Took the cranks off last month and popped the seals on the bearings. Grease was all fine.

Has anyone fitted a Shimano HTII BB lately? I had to buy a special adapter because they’ve changed the shell and the size of the install tool!

Why!! The new BB are a smaller external diameter now, which saves weight but you’ve got to think that the smaller bearings wont last as long as the older ones…

I’ve had about a year out of mine on the commuter, probably equates to 5000 miles. It came with an adaptor for the “normal” HT2 cups.

Press fit does seem a bit of a pain, but probably comes with marginal performance benefits – so far so threaded BB on my bikes.

kimbers – Member

so how come bb30 seem so much worse than bb92-

isnt it just a slightly different diameter?

Nah, BB30 is bearing-in-frame, BB92 has a bearing cup etc which is pressed into the frame