BB Spindle Keeps Backing Out?

(PeteCresswell) said:

Shimano OctaLink into a Maverick MonoLink.

Went a year or more with no problems, then the drive side just tore
out - no recognizable threads left.

Maverick sent a series of replacements - each of which look to me
like the drive side threads aren't all that wonderful.... as in only
a spiral score instead of threads on over a third of the area. It's
like the BB shell of the monolink wasn't perfectly round.

My suspicion is that they had (or still have) a whole batch of bad
ones and my original and all the replacements (3 so far) were among
them.

Tried putting the spindle into one of the replacements dry and it
seemed to work ok.

Put it back in with grease and it isn't working out. After a mile
or two, the creakfest begins.

Today, I rode five miles on a freshly-torqued spindle; creaking began
at less than two miles; got it home, applied the 48 nm that I've been
using, and it re-tightened over half an inch. I've done this once
before - although I didn't take the trouble to measure the movement.

After re-tightening, of course, it's silent again - until those
couple of miles riding...

My kneejerk is to blame the not-so-wonderful threads and say that
putting it together dry just added enough friction to keep it all
together for awhile.

Anybody have another perspective on this? We're talking steel male
threads into magnesium female and FinishLine Premium grease.

After screaming at Maverick, Loctite the damn thing and be done with it.
When it fails, please, please, please get the aluminum one. Ride the [censored]
out of the current one though. 😉
--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Per Phil, Squid-in-Training:

Quoted message said:

After screaming at Maverick, Loctite the damn thing and be done with it.
When it fails, please, please, please get the aluminum one. Ride the [censored]
out of the current one though. 😉

That occurred to me too, but I put that to Maverick sometime last week and they
said not to use LocTite. Dunno why.

I've got three (count 'em 1-2-3) of the things now. Two are going back to
Seven (one of them is a "good" one that they sent me.... with the bare thread
areas circled in red magic marker....) so they can sanity check my assertion
that the threads really are bad.

My intent is to just buy an alu one eventually so this won't be hanging over my
head when I, for instance, fly out to Phoenix for a week sometime...

What am I torturing myself with the mag ones? It's not really torture - I just
want to get to the bottom of it. Maybe my idea of good threads is unrealistic
and, if it is, I'd like to know that.

Seems to me like somewhere I heard that the alu ones were wider. True? If so,
I guess I'm looking at a new spindle/cup set?
--
PeteCresswell

(PeteCresswell) said:

Per Phil, Squid-in-Training:

Quoted message said:

After screaming at Maverick, Loctite the damn thing and be done with
it. When it fails, please, please, please get the aluminum one.
Ride the [censored] out of the current one though. 😉

That occurred to me too, but I put that to Maverick sometime last
week and they said not to use LocTite. Dunno why.

It's permanent, that's all. To replace the BB, you'd have to replace the
link.

Quoted message said:

I've got three (count 'em 1-2-3) of the things now. Two are going
back to Seven (one of them is a "good" one that they sent me.... with
the bare thread areas circled in red magic marker....) so they can
sanity check my assertion that the threads really are bad.

You can always bore and retap Italian, but then you have to use too-short
ISIS and square-taper bottom brackets. And who knows what kind of factor of
safety they used in their BB design?

I'm confused with the Seven reference. Is this a Maverick-licensed Seven
design? I remember you having a cracked stay a while back that got handled
well.

Quoted message said:

My intent is to just buy an alu one eventually so this won't be
hanging over my head when I, for instance, fly out to Phoenix for a
week sometime...

I'll bet you'll adapt to the new geometry of the link pretty quickly with
some saddle-rail-tweaks.

Quoted message said:

What am I torturing myself with the mag ones? It's not really
torture - I just want to get to the bottom of it. Maybe my idea of
good threads is unrealistic and, if it is, I'd like to know that.

No... your idea isn't unrealistic. Maverick's idea of customer service is
unrealistic. If they can't get it right, they're only wasting your time and
their time. It wouldn't be unreasonable for them to send you a new frame,
even though they are a small-run maker.

I'd also leverage the publicity of a newsgroup in your correspondence with
them. Get em to notice that they're only chopping their own legs off by
sending you defective links over and over. To me, they sound like a couple
of [censored] running around screaming, "Cookies! Cookies! More cookies! *chomp
chomp*"

Quoted message said:

Seems to me like somewhere I heard that the alu ones were wider.
True? If so, I guess I'm looking at a new spindle/cup set?

It depends on how much wider. If it's 73 instead of 68, you'll likely be
able to just remove a spacer and you'll be okay. Check to see if there's
one on the drive side already. If you have a 3-piece crankset, you may have
a 68mm-specific BB if there's no spacers. If you have a 2-piece crankset,
you can probably just yank a spacer off.

If the BB is wider, that'll stiffen things up, perhaps imperceptibly.

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

"Phil, Squid-in-Training" <[email hidden]> wrote in
message news:WUT5g.63934$gE.35844@dukeread06...

Quoted message said:

(PeteCresswell) said:

Per Phil, Squid-in-Training:

Quoted message said:

After screaming at Maverick, Loctite the damn thing and be done with
it. When it fails, please, please, please get the aluminum one.
Ride the [censored] out of the current one though. 😉

That occurred to me too, but I put that to Maverick sometime last
week and they said not to use LocTite. Dunno why.

It's permanent, that's all. To replace the BB, you'd have to replace the
link.

Doesn't that depend on the LocTite strength? If you want to go permanent
use JB Weld. I've used it on parts as a last ditch effort to keep something
going.

Greg
--
"What have you got in that paper bag?
Is it a dose of Vitamin C?
Ain't got no time for Western medicine
I am Damo Suzuki" - Mark E Smith

Per Phil, Squid-in-Training:

Quoted message said:

I'm confused with the Seven reference. Is this a Maverick-licensed Seven
design? I remember you having a cracked stay a while back that got handled
well.

"Yes", and "yes".

Custom Seven Duo... which I need like another hole in the head, except that it
fits my statistical outlier of a body and I enjoy riding significantly more that
either of it's two predecessors.

SevenCycles handled the stay *really* well. The LBS where I bought the bike
wasn't all that enthusiastic - although they would have done something sooner or
later - but once I went directly to Seven I could not ask for better, faster,
more accommodating service. About as far over on the good side as Ellsworth
was on the other side... and that's pretty far...

Seven didn't exactly pick up the ball and run with it when I initially reported
the failed MonoLink, but Maverick delivered the (albeit flawed) warranty
replacements quickly and with no hassle. But I think they still haven't got
the message on the possibility of an entire bad batch.

OTOH, I sense that whatever mag MonoLink issues there are, are on the back
burner anyhow since they've switched over to the alu design.

OTOOH, Seven is still ordering the mags...

Once I leaned on Seven a little, they came around and sent me a replacement -
that they said they'd looked at and pronounced good.... but the MonoLink *they*
sent was, IMHO, flawed too.

As a result, I'm starting to doubt my own judgment on threads. Maybe a certain
percentage of flat threads is normal. Accordingly, I'm sending the flawed
replacement back to Seven with the bad areas marked - along with the original
one I tore out and one of Maverick's bad replacements, also marked.

By sometime next week, I'll know whether I'm blowing smoke or not...
--
PeteCresswell

G.T. said:

"Phil, Squid-in-Training" <[email hidden]>
wrote in message news:WUT5g.63934$gE.35844@dukeread06...

Quoted message said:

(PeteCresswell) said:

Per Phil, Squid-in-Training:
> After screaming at Maverick, Loctite the damn thing and be done
> with it. When it fails, please, please, please get the aluminum
> one. Ride the [censored] out of the current one though. 😉

That occurred to me too, but I put that to Maverick sometime last
week and they said not to use LocTite. Dunno why.

It's permanent, that's all. To replace the BB, you'd have to
replace the link.

Doesn't that depend on the LocTite strength? If you want to go
permanent use JB Weld. I've used it on parts as a last ditch effort
to keep something going.

Sure, it can be removable if you like.

But think about it. Let's Loctite a 4mmX10mm metric screw. Let it set.
Try to unscrew it. Hard little bugger, isn't it?

Now let's do it with a large bottom bracket that's 1.37 inches in diameter
and a thread length that's also ~10mm. That's 8.7 times larger and the
surface area of the threads is thus 8.7 times larger. If the threads are
deeper from peak to valley, the surface area then increases by a squared
term, increasing the force required for removal even more. Assuming the
same shear retention force per unit area, the BB will be a complete [censored] to
get off. Then again, since Pete's link has really thin threads... maybe it
won't be so bad 😉

And, of course, people are reluctant to put loosening heat anywhere near a
bike frame... paint/heat treating issues...

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Per Phil, Squid-in-Training:

Quoted message said:

Then again, since Pete's link has really thin threads... maybe it
won't be so bad 😉

Been there, done that on the first replacement. Still creaked like two or
three sombishes. Wasn't easy to get loose, but I wasn't worrying about
breaking the tool either. I think the fallback position with LocTite is heat.
Can't remember the temp, but I think it's somewhere in the low two hundreds that
it breaks down.
--
PeteCresswell