Any thoughts on this bad boy. Competative Cyclist has them and are talking them up pretty good. From what I can tell and from what I’ve been told, there is a lot to improve on with regards to the FSA and Shimano external BB system’s…lots of drag. I’ve been told this is one of the reasons for the ceramic bearings system…would eliminate some of the drag.
Is Campagnolo going in the right direction with there design? Is there any truth to the drag issues in the lower end BB. Any benifits to the ceramic bearings FSA and Shimano both make…
Any thoughts as I’m just trying to educate myself…
having just unpacked the chorus UT crankset for my wife’s new machine, i can say without reservation that this is a fantastic piece of engineering. drag from cartridge bearings? well, maybe, but since i use phil woods BBs or bullseye BB’s on all our other bikes, its hardly any change.
the UT design is just pure genius. its one of the few things i’ve see from campagnolo in several years that makes me proud to use their equipment.
I haven’t actually ridden on this, but I don’t love the Ultra Torque design. I’m a mechanical engineer and I design power transmitting systems all day. You don’t put a joint like that in the middle of a shaft, it basically takes a shaft supported by two bearings and makes a shaft supported by one. I wouldn’t be surprised if the wear life of the hirth joint was very short and the system became pretty sloppy. I could be proven wrong, but just my $.02.
We’ve installed it and ridden it. I’m ready to suggest that Campagnolo’s strategy of looking at previous designs and then introducing their own using refinements of those previous ideas has yeilded impressive results again. you have to do a good job following the instructions installing the equipment, but once installed it really works quite beautifully.
The design was not their genius, but in typical Campy fashion, the execution is flawless. A guy had prototype cranks at the expo in Kona back in 2000 that were carbon with the same mid-shaft coupling. I think the brand name was Negative Mass. Sub-600 gr crank/bb. I don’t think he ever made it into production though.
Get ahold of the VeloNews article were they tested bb bearing drag. Had me digging though the old parts boxes for my old square taper bbs.
Yeah, self aligning bearings are the way to go with outboard bearings. The old cartridge BB’s didn’t have alignment issues because they could be manufactured in factory and aligned pretty much perfectly. Now, with external BBs, the system has to rely on the frames alignment to align the bearings, throw frame flex into the picture (because all triathletes flex frames :)) and you’ve got a pretty inefficient system. The self aligning bearings solve that problem altogether.
Get ahold of the VeloNews article were they tested bb bearing drag. Had me digging though the old parts boxes for my old square taper bbs.
You’re kidding, right?? Did you make it through the entire article? I really do consider myself a guy who sweats the details–seriously. The difference between the best and the worse was what, .5 watts–or less?? I’m just guessing that the added stiffness of the external BB may overcome this massive difference, but either way, I’d bet that how tight you put your quick release skewers has more of an effect on bearing resistance that a ceramic vs. regular external BB…and I’m not kidding.
I’m on about 30,000km’s on the D/A crank, and it’s been flawless. I had the same reservations about the Hirth joint’s long-term durability, but I’ll defer to the mechanical engineers on this one…
You should learn how to read. The article yeilds only a .5% percent drag in power output with ceramic bearings. The test yeilds a 4% drag in power output with the standard 2 piece Bottom Bracket. You take those numbers at 300 watts over an Ironman and thats the difference in 24.9mph or 4:30 vs. 25.4mph or 4:25.
With an above average elite traiathlete or 2nd tier Ironman pro who rides 4:45-5:00…your looking at about a 6 minute savings with the same power output.
You sweat the details but you negleted to run the numbers. Here’s another article for you to look over…oh wait…it’s the exact same article…
Now, if your tooling around your neighborhood at 18 - 20 mph…I seriously doubt you’ll notice anything.
What’s with the skewer issues. Never heard of anyone over tightening the skewers to cause any issues.
You’ve ridden 30,000 km’s and no issues. Your one of the very few then. I rode 12,000 miles last year and changed at least 3 from dirt / grim / water / etc. I just took the bearings I had on a 2000 mile frame and there worthless. You can feel the dirt inside the bearings.
Your malapropisms aside, I did find your response humorous…
I was refering to the Velonews article, not the Competive Cyclist nonsense. It talks specifically about the amount of watts to turn the BB–which is next to nothing. The watts to spin a BB is an absolute–not a percentage of wattage, meaning it doesn’t increase with wattage.
Claiming that external BB’s induce a 4% drag at speed is absolutely ridiculous.
As far as the cyclingnews ‘article’, that been so effectively debunked that I’m not going to waste my breath–or fingers.
I DO agree with you on the bearings of the cranks–I was referring to the cranks themselves, which some folks seem to suggest had issues at the crank/bb interface. I switched to the Phil bearings in the DA BB and have had zero trouble with them.
