Dying Record BB - ride or not?

[ols]

Based on a forum search of previous discussions on record BB issues (with the carbon shell in the middle), I have already ordered a Phil Wood BB as a replacement .... but it wont arrive for a week or more. In the meantime, I have a spindle that does not turn too smoothly at all. I only noticed this because, when I travel with my bike, I have to pull the crankset, and while the spindle used to turn in my fingers super smoothly, it now feels like its full of grape nuts inside -- smooth spinning is a thing of the past and has been replaced with a grinding crunchy feel. (By the way, I did originally install with a torque wrench per the Campy manual.)

In any event, I started to remove the BB, and after taking off the non-drive side cup, the spindle turns smoothly again. Hmmmm. Any thoughts on whether to regrease/reinstall and do this weekend's long ride with the Campagnolo grape nuts or whether to just do an epic mountain bike ride instead?

Is there such as thing as catastrophic BB failure, or do they just seize up or should I just ride until it dies and report back? :)

[Too Tall]

As Jeff Foxworthy might say "walk it off". Run it.

[chrisroph]

Regrease, reinstall, use less than the spec'd torque. Sometimes, torqueing to spec causes binding. The instructions even address this issue and say if you get binding, install with loctite and less torque. I frequestly install the campy bb's with grease at 35-40 lbs.

[ols]

I will try a regrease/ reinstall. Thanks for the thoughts. By the way, I do recall torquing the drive side to 70NM (per the manual), and using 35NM or so on the non-drive side (along with some blue loctite) since it was indeed binding when it was new. Should I back down the drive side to 35NM as well? I guess it cant hurt to experiment a bit since I've got a replacement part coming anyway! Thanks again.

[chrisroph]

ols--no need to loosen the drive side. What causes binding is the cupa pressing in on the bearings. That is accomplished when you tighten the non-drive side cup.

I removed an english chorus bb from my cross bike earlier this week to put in my new old legend. The bb was toast. I was considering runing it until picking up a new bb but I removed the english cups and used them with a spare italian chorus bb I had lying around. Worked like a charm.