Token Square Taper (ISO) Bottom Bracket

[robc02]

Other than Campag originals, these are about the only viable option for users of Campagnolo chainsets requiring 102mm axles i.e. Chorus / Record.
I have a few of these chainsets and have been using them for many years, including on commuting bikes. I found the original BBs had a pretty short life in my local winter conditions - wet with lots of gritty mud. One of the bearings was easy to replace, the other two less so, being retained by a pressed on ring that got damaged when removing. Hence my interest in an economical alternative.

I fitted the Token BB to my year round commuter around 2013/14. Before fitting I removed the inner bearing seal and put liberal amounts of an oil and grease mixture inside. A couple of years later I removed it (part of some other maintenance as I recall) and took the chance to clean and refill itwith Penrite semi fluid grease). Other than a check to see that it would still come undone - while I was derusting and painting the BB shell and chainstays - it has had no other attention.

During that period it has performed perfectly, with a satisfying slight ooze of grease around the external seals - mixing with the mud with which it was blasted. Recently I noticed a bit of play developing so I took it apart and discovered the problem was the drive side bearing. It was running slightly rough, and there was evidence of some water ingress amongst the mass of runny grease - only a bit but enough to damage the bearing.

It turns out that replacement bearings are available, but they are a non standard size (16x31x10) and a pair cost as much as a complete BB. The seal inside them said 6002, but the bearing is not a standard 6002. I presume it is a thin walled type in order to maximise the ball size for the given space in the BB unit. Also, I have been unable to find a source for the thin rubber seals that are fitted outside of the bearing. Mine looked in reasonable condition but it would have been preferable to replace them.

OK, I could have replaced just the driveside bearing, as the other seemed perfect, but I decided to go for a replacement unit and keep the old on for spares. All in all, I consider the experiment to have been a success - long life under harsh conditions with minimal maintenance. To be honest, apart from the play, which was only barely noticeable when riding, I could have carried on using it for quite some time.

[Brucey]

oddly enough I remember you posting about this and at about that time I similarly fitted a cheaper sun race BB to my hack bike. I used SFG inside it from the start, only my stuff had as many corrosion inhibitors in it as I could manage. I also fitted auxiliary seals/shields. I noted that during installation it would have been easy to overload the bearings, since tightening the LH cup would easily crush the bearing (steel tube) spacer to a smaller dimension than the axle shoulders.

I planned to use this feature to adjust any clearance out of the bearings if they wore significantly.

To my disappointment the bearings (which are the same size as the ones in Token units) developed a little free play inside a couple of years. I carried on using the thing anyway, intending to adjust it at some point in the future. I finally got round to doing this a week or two ago. I found I was able to eliminate the free play, and thus far ( a couple of hundred miles) it hasn't returned.

I don't think I would have been able to do the same thing with a token unit because the centre spacer on a Token BB is made of carbon fibre.

I don't recommend running these units with any free play in them; if nothing else it wears the lip seals, which can't be a good thing. I have not stripped the bearings but if the colour of the lube nearby is anything to go by, there hasn't been water ingress.

FWIW if you remove the inner seals when the bearings are new, you can use them in the outer positions in the event that the seals wear.

cheers

[robc02]

I take your point about replacing the outer seal on the bearing. The one I would really like to replace is the one at the outer edge of the cup that looks like a thin rubber washer on a metal stiffener. So far I haven't found any for sale. Given the high price of the bearings compared to a more common type or to the cost of a complete replacement unit maybe it is a purely academic point anyway.

The Token unit lasted a lot longer than the Campag Chorus ones and is much cheaper to replace. Originally I was hoping that when the time came I could replace the bearings for less than a tenner, but it was not to be. Probably the only extra thing I can now do is to make some kind of aluminium or plastic shield to catch most of the muck before it encrusts the BB - a better mudflap might be a good start. When the new unit arrives it will get the strip down and semi fluid grease treatment.

I agree about not running with free play, both for the reason you say and because I am a bit OCD about such things! Strange, that, as I am completely unfussy about the battered state of the bike in general. This one certainly has to work for its living.

[Brucey]

I was forgetting about the extra seal on the token BB cups. There is a fundamental problem with having two lip seals 'in series' if you like which is that unless the inner one leaks lube out to some extent, the outer one cannot always have a film of lubricant at the lip, without which the lip will soon wear and become ineffective. Worse yet it may let water in, to a place where it cannot easily escape from.

I used additional shields to simply keep most of the crud away from that area, and only having one seal (with plentiful lube behind it) seemed to work well enough. With a token unit I'd probably give the outer lip seal the occasional squirt of aerosol SFG just to keep the seal lips happy.

FWIW you can buy a cheap BB which uses the same size bearings (eg a neco) for about a fiver. This may offer a bargain price route to refurbing a token unit, albeit it doesn't give you new outer seals.

cheers

[NickJP]

Maybe you could utilise the trick that I used many years ago on cup and cone square taper BBs that had no seals at all between the axle and cups. To prevent having to frequently strip down the BBs due to water/dirt/dust getting past the cups into the bearings, I would cut washers from ~10mm thick sponges, work grease liberally into them until they were completely saturated with grease, slip them over the tapers on the axle, and then fit the cranks. The cranks would compress the sponge washers down onto the cups and create a excellent seal to prevent anything getting into the bearings. This worked best if the BB also had a plastic concertina inside the BB shell between the left and right cups to seal the bearings against anything that got into the BB shell via the seat tube or down tube or chainstays.

I did this modification on my and my wife's commuting and touring bikes, which got ridden in any sort of weather and over all sorts of roads, and even though I still serviced the BBs every couple of years, they would be in pristine condition when taken apart, with no sign of any contamination in the bearings.

When I switched to using Shimano UN72 BBs, I found that the seals on them were good enough that the BBs lasted for many years without needing any additional sealing. I had one in my commute bike for over a decade, and it still felt perfectly smooth at the end of that time.

[robc02]

.......... There is a fundamental problem with having two lip seals 'in series' if you like which is that unless the inner one leaks lube out to some extent, the outer one cannot always have a film of lubricant at the lip, without which the lip will soon wear and become ineffective. Worse yet it may let water in, to a place where it cannot easily escape from.

I used additional shields to simply keep most of the crud away from that area, and only having one seal (with plentiful lube behind it) seemed to work well enough. With a token unit I'd probably give the outer lip seal the occasional squirt of aerosol SFG just to keep the seal lips happy.

cheers

I tried to address the first point by filling the gap between the two seals with semi fluid grease. There always seemed to be some grease around the outside of the seal but it clearly wasn't enough or being replenished often enough.

What type of additional shields did you use? Were they anything like Nilos rings?

Maybe you could utilise the trick that I used many years ago .........I would cut washers from ~10mm thick sponges, work grease liberally into them until they were completely saturated with grease, slip them over the tapers on the axle, and then fit the cranks.

That's an interesting idea. I had thought about homemade replacements for the Token outer seals but of rubber rather than absorbent foam.


One of the concerns I had was that any attempt to clean or lubricate between the crank and cup - a space that quickly became packed with wet mud and grit - might do more harm than good by pushing grit in past the seal.

[Brucey]

What type of additional shields did you use? Were they anything like Nilos rings?
.

Not quite like Nilos rings; I made thin brass discs (with no upturned edge) which were sandwiched between the cup and bearing, slightly dished and set to (just) run clear of the bearing centre. In addition to that I used a modified plastic roofing washer which was snug fit on the BB spindle, outside the cup such that the OD of the washer was just small enough that it sat inside the cup splines. To keep the washer in position, I used a short length of coolant hose a spacer, to keep the washer spaced away from the crank.

The net result was a reasonably effective additional labyrinth. Because lube from the bearing unit slowly 'exuded', dirt tended to stick to the outside of the washer and spacer, but relatively little got any further than that.
I have used the brass disc approach before on suspension pivots using cartridge bearings on FS MTBs; here they can be made full contact with no detriment and the result is that the bearings, once packed with decent grease, seemingly last forever, and can be pressure washed with less concern about water ingress.
The main problem with the BB shields I made was that the coolant hose spacer eventually softened and swelled slightly once it had been soaked in oil for long enough. I have a feeling that although the bearings are the same size as in the token BB, the 2RS seals may be different; I think that in the cheaper BBs like the SunRace one (and Neco, RPM etc which are all built the same way), the 2RS seals are never meant to be full contact, which explains why a lot of these cheaper units simply don't last very long.

I quite like NickJP's scheme. I wonder if a little heat shrink (or a short length of other plastic tube) to cover the foam might be a good idea? I have it in mind that a similar thing might usefully be added to freehubs, sandwiched between the cassette lockring and the dust shield. The idea here would be that the dust shield could then have a hole in it, which would usually be covered by the foam ring. Whenever the cassette is off, the foam ring could be removed and more SFG added to the hub via the hole.

cheers

[Gattonero]

This post is showing what I've been saying for long time: 99% of cartridge bearings will fail because of contamination, not because "they are cartridge bearings" per se.
The reason why so many cartridge-type bearings will fail starts from the poor lubrication they have at the factory, both because there is little lubricant to boot, and whatever this was is most often not adequate for wet riding conditions.
Seals play an important part in this, but can only do that much because at some point there will be moisture leaking in, and this is where a good lubrication can neutralize the bad effects of moisture.
Most often the cartridge bearings are more than adequate for the loads they have to withstand, but sometimes they are not, and they are fitted incorrectly, and they may also fit too tight or too loose in their allocated space and/or been adjusted incorrectly (a cartridge-type headset is a good example of this). If you add bearings that aren't good quality to begin with, then you can understand why so many people complain of "BB30 creaking"!
Cartridge bearings can be a good solution if correctly used, however their simplicity in the design leads some manufacturers and the end users to cut many corners at the point that any bearing will end up working -at best!- in sub-optimal conditions. No surprise then to see all of those premature failures.

[Brucey]

in fairness there are an awful lot of cartridge bearings which are excessively preloaded when they are fitted in the factory. It costs money to machine housings to within a few um; much easier for the manufacturers to err on the side of a tight fit. If the bearings are reasonable quality a very high preload will still 'feel OK'. However the slightest deterioration in the bearing condition and the bearing will, if it is highly preloaded, immediately feel terrible.

Most often bearings which feel terrible in a hub don't feel that bad once they are out of the hub and relieved of their monster preload.

So standards vary; between housing tolerances, shaft shoulder tolerances, bearing tolerances, variation in greases and seal quality, there is a real danger of unwittingly comparing chalk with cheese.

Part of the motivation for my experiment was to see how well a cheap cartridge bearing setup would last, in the event that I gave it every chance from the start. The expected life of such BBs, locally, when installed 'normally' is about a year. I was disappointed when the bearings I used did develop some free play after eighteen months or so, and surprised when they did not then fail catastrophically as a consequence.

FWIW my plan is to modify some of these bearings by grinding so that they become 'full complement angular contact' type, which ought to be stronger. With a bit of cunning I think I can increase the width of the fitted assembly slightly, delete (or greatly shorten) the centre sleeve and use a lockring on the LH cup, thus making the whole affair adjustable.

cheers

[robc02]

I have now found these at Aire Velo Bearings:

https://www.airevelobearings.com/product/163110-2rs-square-taper-bb-steel-bearings-sold-as-a-pair/

The price is good though they are unbranded. I will rebuild my old BB with them and put it aside until needed, so won't be able to see how good they are for (hopefully) quite some time.

[Brucey]

photo shows bearings with 'VP' on the dust shields, so may well be from (or for) VP who make all kinds of BB bearings, pedals, headsets, that kind of thing.

Also there are a couple of vendors on ebay (from Hong Kong) who sell this size bearings and provided you buy a 10 or more at a time they work out about £2 each, eg 10 off

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10pc-163110-2RS-16x31x10-mm-Rubber-Ball-Bearing-Bearings-163110RS-16-31-10/153298589972

Also available x25 off for about £40.

If bearings from any one source were from a 'known good' brand then it would presumably be worth paying a reasonable price for them. However 'bearing in mind' (groan) that they usually don't so much "die of natural causes" as "are murdered" I would subscribe to the idea that quality of lubrication is often more important than bearing quality per se.

cheers

[robc02]

I hadn't noticed that.

The ones I received only had the part number on the seals and nothing on the metal parts.

[Brucey]

sometimes when they say 'unbranded' then it means that the actual supplier of the bearings can vary; this means that the exact quality may not be same when you make a repeat order.

cheers

[robc02]

..........

If bearings from any one source were from a 'known good' brand then it would presumably be worth paying a reasonable price for them. However 'bearing in mind' (groan) that they usually don't so much "die of natural causes" as "are murdered" I would subscribe to the idea that quality of lubrication is often more important than bearing quality per se.

cheers

The few of these bearings I have seen for sale are unbranded/variable source so it seems there might not be much choice anyway.

I also think that lubrication is the key, subject to the bearings not being complete tat. The method I used gave a reasonable lifespan, but the original seals are now a bit worn. I plan to try to make some new ones with an O ring contacting the spindle. I like the sound of your DIY labrinth seal as well.

I ought to have a look at fitting an oil/grease port the the top of the BB shell feeding into the carbon sleeve, so that the lubricant could be replenished more easily. It would be a bit of a faff as there is a (disused) front mech cable guide just where the hole would be, plus the sleeve would have to be "timed" on assembly.