Malmesbury Bikes

I know it’s not cycling, but my Mizuno Wave Harrier trail shoes have saved me from several ungainly falls over the winter in the mud and snow. Check out a review here.

Your pedals wobble and it’s not a loose crank, so it’s probably the bottom bracket (it’s “BB” in cycle-shorthand) – what do you do:

A – keep pedaling until something catastrophic happens.

B – panic and call the local bike shop.

C – fix it yourself.

When it happened to my old MTB last year I chose option “B”, which in hindsight was probably right, as they had to use a lot of heat to get the old BB out and then respray the frame to get it back together, all for the original quote.

But when my Cannondale hybrid BB started to wobble a few weeks back I went for option “C”. I’ll let Sheldon Brown explain some of the intricacies about bottom brackets – suffice to say that for the majority of Shimano-equipped bikes, the BB will have a standard diameter, so all you need to measure are the width of the bottom bracket housing and the width of the spindle to ascertain what size to order. Alternatively you can just take the old one out and check what’s written on the inside of the BB.

Removing a bottom bracket is where the panic is likely to set in, but rest assured it’s really easy. You will need the Shimano BB tool, which costs about £12, and a very large adjustable spanner (or plumber’s wrench), but once you’ve got those the job is really easy.

There’s a small caveat – if the bottom bracket has never been changed and/or the bike’s had a hard life, then this job could be considerably harder, involved copious quantities of WD40 to loosen the threads… but then, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The bottom bracket on the Cannondale Adventure (hybrid) started to get a bit wobbly a few weeks back. I’ve now got a frame stripped of everything apart from the forks, a tray of old dirty parts, a bin of old knackered parts and a box of new parts (including new cyclocross tyres).

The plan is to get it back together for the end of April… famous last words?

“I wore the sack for about three hours and never really noticed it was there”. . .  read more here.