Threaded vs Press Fit Bottom Bracket

What are the advantages / disadvantages and is one generally considered better than the other and would you not buy a bike if it had your less preferred.

Threaded, a sorted technology in many ways, plenty of choice of stuff that just works (I was moving Hope BB’s between frames)

It would be a deal breaker for me if there was more choice in the prices I was looking. I’ve now got 2 press fit and they are holding up OK, but they will be replaced with a Hope type offering whenever they die.

So in the end of the day more things to worry about than the BB

Read this…

https://off.road.cc/content/feature/dear-bike-industry-i-am-sorry-for-whatever-we-did-to-deserve-press-fit-932

Press fit is cheaper for frame manufacturers.

threaded is better in every other way. However isn’t a deal breaker for me if it a frame doesn’t have it.

There are different ‘flavours’ of press-fit BB – the one to avoid is BB30 or anything where just the bearing is pressed directly into the BB shell as water often gets down the seat tube and there’s no means to keep it effectively sealed from contamination. I have a couple of bikes running PF41/BB92 – now that the likes of Wheel Manufacturing make screw-together BB’s that maintain bearing alignment and keep the cr@p out. Fortunately, most manufacturers are now returning to threaded BBs.

Press fit is cheaper for frame manufacturers.

Then the marketing BS comes in to play: makes the frame stiffer/more compliant/etc. For off-road: makes the trails come alive.

Great fun walking in to a bike shop: “can I help you sir?”, “I’m looking for a new bike”, “Well there’s these …”, “Any with a proper BB?”, “Errr …”, walk out of shop.

Great fun walking in to a bike shop: “can I help you sir?”, “I’m looking for a new bike”, “Well there’s these …”, “Any with a proper BB?”, “Errr …”, walk out of shop.

Err yeah.  Great fun.  Bike shops must love you.

Anyway threaded is better, but as most other have said, wouldn’t (and hasn’t) stopped me getting a bike I wanted just because of the BB, and mine now has a Hope BB on it.

I got a great deal on a cube and it is pressfit. I had my reservations but its been fine so far for the 2years i have owned it. My other bike however has been through 2 threaded mt800 bottom brackets in less than 12 months. I think the newer all black mt800 are made of cheese as my older silver ones never gave any bother for years. So i say dont let a bottom bracket sway you.

It’s a BB86 … I don’t know if that’s good or bad????

I saw the couple of comments about a Hope BB ….. are they threaded and if mine failed in the future can I swap it out for a threaded one and if so does it mean a whole new crank set as well ??

Threaded is better IMO, but PF92/86 is ok too. Like above, I too would avoid BB30, not a good system

Threaded BB: I use Shimano Saint BBs. No issues. Installation is very easy.

Press Fit BB (BB 92): I use Shimano XTR BBs. No issues. Installation is very easy – and with the Shimano assembly tool very, very quick.

Both systems work for me. I do a lot of mud-biking. Sooner or later the mud will kill the BB – 2 years life for a BB is good for me.

Damn pressfit cost me a fortune .

My Cannondale lefty f29er had various issues, it creaked like hell, so I got new bearings still creaked ,  so eventually I got the threaded adaptor cost £15 although my regular mechanic had to file the inner frame to get it fitted, but it’s now been running 14 months with a mt800 68/73mm threaded, perfect

My spec diverge has to have the external adaptors cut out as they had seized solid, in fairness I should have greased it, but it never made a noise, new bearings adaptors were £45 so once again I got the adaptor to threaded..

would I buy another pressfit bike, hopefully not

I am still running square taper and ISIS although I would avoid pressfit.

BB30 pressfit seems to be junk. was a few years since i’ve owned a bike with that & even the so called ‘solutions’ wern’t any better.

Would prefer a normal threaded BB which one bike has, the other has a PF92 & that to be fair as been totally trouble free.

I wouldn’t discount a bike if it was PF92.

No issues with press fit across several bikes here.

Need to be installed well and decent quality.

9/10 the creak that BB get blamed for turns out to be a different part of the bike.

Threaded ones are easier to swap around

but I think i did it twice in 4 years of owning my last PF92 bike (tbf the low spec sram one it came with lasted less than a year, but the Works screw together one I replaced it with was fine for the next 3 years- I topped up the grease in the bearings once)

Youd be mad to avoid an otherwise good bike because it may add 20 minutes to your mainetnance time over 4 years