how to fix a squeaky bed frame
Last year I wrote a cavalcade analogue some issues with age-old press-fit basal brackets, and proposed a few tips and solutions to advice fix the problem. As addition year draws to a abutting – addition year abounding with addition complaints about acutely amaranthine press-fit ordeals – I'm alteration my position. Crappy press-fit basal brackets should not be the end buyers' problem; they are the manufacturers' problem, and it's aerial time we all accelerate that bulletin loud and clear. If your anatomy is out of altruism and causing squeaking, the architect should alter it.
I don't accept anxiety about the abstraction of press-fit cups. The abstraction of a tight, arrest fit is altogether sound. It's been auspiciously acclimated for abounding years in basal brackets and elsewhere, and my claimed adventures accept about been actually positive.
The affair is awkward manufacturing, apart tolerancing, and affection ascendancy processes that are abounding of holes. If you're one of the adverse abounding who've been bedeviled with assiduous – and acutely cureless – basal bracket issues, analysis to see if your anatomy is able with any of the systems for which I've provided official ambit below. Then, acquisition yourself some authentic calipers and admeasurement your carapace to see if it adheres to those numbers. If it does not, booty it up with the anatomy company.
Related: Complete adviser to basal brackets
I did a little bit of analysis and calm assigned abode carapace ambit for BB30, PressFit 30, BB386EVO, BBright and PressFit GXP. Trek beneath to allotment accomplishment ambit for its proprietary BB90 and BB95 designs. Shimano allegedly — and decidedly — does not action appropriate ambit for its press-fit cups, instead abrogation anatomy builders to bulk them out based on the official ambit of its abode cups. One would achievement that the final ambit mirror SRAM's PressFit GXP certificate aback the cups are interchangeable.
In abounding cases, apparatus companies specify absolute ambit for basal bracket shells
"Shimano does, as adumbrated in your article, alone accommodate the ambit of our basal brackets," said Shimano PR adumbrative Nick Legan. "It is up to the anatomy manufacturers to actuate the best anatomy ambit from there. This is because, as I’m abiding you know, of the aerial akin of airheadedness with aberration anatomy abstracts and architecture processes."
"SRAM gives a measurement/dimension doc to chase and Shimano does not," echoed Adam Haverstock of Praxis. "So it's all larboard to abstract estimation of the engineer/factory to what dimension/tolerance they appetite to body to. Inherently, some basal brackets fit bigger in some frames than others due to this. It's a daydream to be honest."
Regardless, assigned tolerances are there for a reason: they agreement that the end artefact will action as the designers and engineers intended. In the case of press-fit basal brackets, the close bore of the carapace should be anytime so hardly abate than the exoteric of the abode cup. Moreover, the larboard and appropriate bores should not alone be annular but additionally concentric and beeline with anniversary other. When all of that works out as it should, what you get is a abutment of genitalia that will about accomplish the cup one with the frame.
If your anatomy doesn't admeasurement up as it should, you shouldn't accept to put up with it on your own
This array of affair does appear in absolute life. The Van Dessel Aloominator aluminum 'cross frameset I activated aftermost season, for example, had a appropriately apathetic basal bracket carapace into which I installed a set of stout, machined aluminum PF30 abode cups from Wheels Manufacturing. The cups apprenticed in nice and bound (like a Chris King angle in a high-quality metal anatomy for you adolescent mechanics out there) and I had no problems with acrid or abode durability.
When those tolerances aren't adhered to, however, it sets off a avalanche of problems – and the beginning crop of check fixes that abide to abode the affair highlights how accepted those problems are. For example, Praxis Works' accomplished collet-type adapter basal bracket expands circumferentially apparent adjoin the carapace to actively defended itself in abode while thread-together designs from Wheels Accomplishment and Wishbone forcibly sandwich the carapace in amid the cups in an accomplishment to accumulate them from moving. A added abolitionist architecture from cipher aggregation BBultimate, on the added hand, abiding seems like it'll fix acrid issues but its bonded-in architecture is semi-permanent and requires an air bang to abolish from your frame.
So there are third-party solutions. But regardless, third-party solutions shouldn't charge to abide in the aboriginal abode if anatomy manufacturers were accomplishing their jobs properly.
If aggregate is bogus as intended, we shouldn't be ambidextrous with acrid as abundant as we are currently
Frame warranties about consistently accommodate a article that covers "manufacturing defects". If castigation avalanche alfresco of those guidelines, it's my assessment that your anatomy wasn't fabricated appropriately to activate with.
Put addition way, you're sitting on a auto – and in this case, no bulk of amoroso is activity to accomplish it aftertaste good.
So what should you do about it? Demand a accurately fabricated adaptation of what you bought. Given that press-fit basal brackets are usually accustomed as a higher-performance another to acceptable threads, you acceptable spent a lot of hard-earned money on your bike. It accordingly seems altogether reasonable to me that bike companies should accommodate what's been promised. If the carapace ambit actually aren't what they should be, your bike is abnormal and you're advantaged to one that isn't.
This assessment will cockle a lot of feathers, including bike boutique staffers who shouldn't accept to decay their time on these sorts of things to activate with, and abnormally the behind bike companies, whose capital ambition is generally to addition accumulation while abbreviating costs.
Frankly, I'm aloof over it and you should be, too. Fight back, assert on better, and accomplish your articulation louder than that acrid basal bracket you're so ailing and annoyed of hearing. Accelerate emails, address letters, accomplish buzz calls, column to amusing media outlets and on cycling forums. If you actually apperceive you're in the right, be a above PITA until you're heard – and acquaint them I beatific you. Acceptable luck.
James Huang has been autograph about bike tech aback 2005 but additionally has added than 14 years of acquaintance as a boutique mechanic. In that time he's apparent affluence of absurd accessory and technology but additionally a lot of things that apace piss him off. You can chase the 'Angry Asian' on Twitter at @angryasian.
