By Rick Schultz
I’ve recently been asked by numerous cyclists about Bottom Brackets (BB’s), Bearings, etc. Their questions arose from several YouTube videos reviewing Hambini’s “$300” Bottom Brackets. Let’s take for example this Hambini Racing BB30 Bottom Bracket for Shimano Crankset. This BB lists for £197 or about $266 USD.
Looking at the details, you will quickly notice that the Outside Diameter (OD) of the BB is sized for a BB30 frame but that the Inside Diameter (ID) says 24mm Shimano crankset. So, one of two things are happening.
- Hambini uses 6806 bearings with a 30mm to 24mm reducer to fit the Shimano crank, or
- Hambini uses a 3024 bearing which, as the name implies is 30mm OD and 24mm ID.
Hambini chose option 2, since it will produce a stiffer BB (because of no plastic reducer).
But, if you want to use a high quality set of bearings for your BB30 cranksets, just replace the 3024 bearings with native 6806 bearings.
Who Makes A High Quality 6806 Bearing?
One of the highest quality bearings in the industry are made by SKF. There are other manufacturers, and it seems that most are made in Japan or Europe.
I’ve done quite a bit of testing of bearings and in fact have bought high quality races, rings, balls and built my own BB bearings using my own special grease. The question I get all of the time is, “How do your bearings compare to Chinese ceramic bearings?”
Here’s my answer.
- The only thing ceramic inside of a Chinese ceramic bearing is the balls. The rest of the bearing is steel
- Chinese claim grade 3.
- Grade 3 is for the balls. Grade 3 means 3/1,000,000” tolerance of sphericity. How can the average cyclist confirm this? These could be grade 3, grade 10, grade 200 and you would never know.
- The Chinese manufacturers never mention the precision of the races or rings. I am guessing that these are grade 200. This is one possible reason why it takes 250 miles+ to ‘break in’ Chinese ceramic bearings.
- When I purchased precision bearing parts for my own bearings, I chose grade 7 steel balls with precision ground races and rings (i.e., as close as I could get to grade 7). These bearings rode smooth from the first pedal stroke, no need for breaking in. My experience with SKF bearings right out of the box is the same. They outperformed every grade 3 Chinese ceramic bearing.
Who Uses SKF Bearings?
How’s this for pedigree – 2021 Ferrari Formula 1 car uses SKF bearings.
Bearing Pricing
NOTE: Pricing below is from an authorized USA SKF distributor. If you are paying lower prices than these for SKF bearings, they are likely to be fake or counterfeit.
SKF BEARINGS 6806 = 30x42x7 – SUPER PRECISION ANGULAR CONTACT
These 71806 bearings can handle upwards of 60,000 rpm and are WAY OVERKILL for a bicycle bottom bracket application spinning at 120 rpm.
You are much more likely to use 61806-2RS1 Deep Groove Ball Bearings for your BB30 bottom bracket application.
SKF BEARINGS 6806 = 30x42x7 – DEEP GROOVE BALL BEARING
Why Use A Hambini Bottom Bracket?
- Precision engineered one-piece design aligns the bearings perfectly which fixes issues with a frame’s BB being out of round or out of tolerance.
- Stiffer than stock Press Fit (PF) BB’s
- Fully serviceable
Is The Hambini BB Worth It?
Here in the US, the Hambini BB referenced above is $266. As a consumer, I can buy a set of high quality 61806 SKF bearings for $273.62. The bearings alone are $7.62 more than Hambini’s complete BB WITH bearings! With that being said, Hambini shows in his videos that he uses NTN bearings made in Osaka, Japan. His pricing is £24 or $32.50 per 6806 bearing x 2 is $65.00 for the pair leaving around $200 for the BB housing and install tools.
So, it depends on several factors.
- If your frame’s BB shell is out of tolerance, then YES, you will need this to fix your frames problems
- If you want to remove creaking and squeaking the right way, then YES
- If you want a stiffer feeling frame, again YES
Coach Rick Schultz is an avid cyclist who trains, races and coaches in Southern California. Rick is an engineer by trade, and in addition to being a coach, he’s a bike fitter and prolific product reviewer. He’s the author of Stretching & Core Strengthening for the Cyclist in the RBR eBookstore. Check his product reviews website, www.biketestreviews.com, and his coaching site, www.bikefitnesscoaching.com. Click to read Rick’s full bio.
Interesting article. I’ve honestly never given much thought to bearings, other than keeping them clean and properly greased with regular maintenance. I’ve worked on my own bikes for over forty years, and in that time all of the racing bikes I’ve had have been equipped with either Campagnolo Nouvo Record, Record or Super Record components. “Back in the day”, all of the wheels sets I had were laced up with with the same hubs: Nouvo, Super, or Record. Most of us never doubted typical Campagnolo quality, at least on their flag ship groupos.
I recently purchased a used 2016 Colnago C60 fitted with 2015-2018 Record components and BORA WTO 45 wheels. The wheels were new when I bought the bike. While the bike is in extremely good condition, I don’t have an accurate measure of how many kilometres are on it. The chain has zero wear, the cassette looks to be nearly new and the chain rings are in top condition. I decided to remove the crankset to check the bearings, and aside from a bit of sand in the BB shell, things were greased well and the bearings, made by CeramicSpeed, are super smooth. That’s when I started to thing that made I should shore up on a few spare parts, with the supply chain being what it is (essentially broken). Stores in the Toronto area had nothing that I wanted so I set out to make on-line purchases. I was able to locate everything I wanted, including a spare CeramicSpeed/Colnago Threadfit T45 BB. I was a bit taken aback at the price, which included the cups, wave washer, bearings and a tube of their grease. The price was around $311CDN from totalcycling.com in the UK.
Before I made the purchase, I posted a question about them to a couple of bike forums, one being Bike Radar, and the other was on Road Bike Review. The responses I got from Bike Radar were modest and pretty tepid, though one responder had recently purchased one of the CeramicSpeed BB’s for a Shimano equipped bike and he remarked how a “clicking” sound that he had with the previous BB was now gone. So he was a happy camper.
However, the responses that I got on Road Bike Review were nothing short of insulting. Really childish, actually. People were outraged that I payed that for a BB, they slandered the company mocked the idea of ceramic bearings, insinuated that they’re for “cork sniffers”, and so forth. So, when I read your article, it got me thinking what kind of reviews Hambini gets as they are not a lot cheaper than the CeramicSpeed set? I’m not averse to steel bearings. In fact, I could care less either way, but the C59, C60 and C64 are all equipped with the CeramicSpeed T45 and so it made sense to me to buy another set, in the event I need one down the road. Whether or not there’s another company that makes a compatible BB for less, is irrelevant at this point as I’ve already purchased a spare. Please, feel free to chime in.
I was trying to avoid Campy and their proprietary parts. In fact, the ‘Shimano’ standard ‘6805’ is 25x37x7mm, Campy is 25x37x6, that is why they will jam if you replace them with the industry standard 25x37x7 bearings. You are paying more for several reasons
a) the have the name Campagnolo tied to them
b) they are proprietary, not a lot made compared to standard so cost of manufacturing is more
c) they say Campy on them 🙂
d) Ceramic speed is also using ceramic balls vs steel balls so price is more
As pointed out and proven by Hambini, many bicycle frames have misaligned BB’s so he fills a specific niche solving that problem. He is expensive, compared to the 25 cent Enduro garbage, but his BBs will run smooth and the bearings will last a long time.
This is just another example of gullible cyclists sucomming to the marketing greed of the cycling industry. Why do I say this? Because when I went to Bearing headquarters in saint Louis whose business if supplying every kind of bearing imaginable and I enquired about ceramic bearings and their comment was “ceramic bearings are used because they don’t conduct electricity! That’s really important on a bicycle now isn’t it.
Everyone has their own cost/benefit threshold. I ride over 500 hours a year. When I bought a Specialized Mirror saddle, I rationalized that if I loved it, it was less than $1/hour if it only lasted a year, and if didn’t, I could probably sell it for what I paid for it. I loved it so much I have it on two of my bikes… it is the most comfortable saddle I’ve ever used in over 30 years on a bike.
So when the Quark PM on my S-Works Tarmac SL6 died, I had a dilemma. Quark would replace it, but the new SRAM DUB spec required a change of the BB. Do I go with a SRAM BB? Or do I spring for a much more expensive, but longer lasting and smoother BB like a BB Infinite? The latter was 10x more expensive, but still worked out to less than $1 per mile over a year, and was much more comparable than the original Ceramic Speed BB.
What would you do?