Is it Okay to Have Play in Bearings?

December 28, 2022

 

A tiny bit of play is normal and necessary for radial contact bearings (the dominant bearings style used in cycling industry). The play you are feeling are the internal tolerances of the bearings themselves, a situation that's typically impossible to feel in other bottom brackets because they're so misaligned and bound up. You normally only sense such movements in wheel hubs, like those made by Mavic and Zipp, because they're set up correctly like our systems are. Yes, bearing internal clearance is normal.

 

I'm sure you guys have already seen me do my setup where i use my finger to do the final torque on this little plastic uh bolt in the Shimano that does the preload because what I'm trying to do is to get rid of the axial play without shutting the bearings down by giving it too much preload now if you were here right now you could feel that there is just the slightest amount of play in these crank arms and what you're feeling is you're feeling the the tolerances of the inner outer the inner race the outer race and the balls and the crank is actually gimbaling very slightly on them that's because we want to not have any preload whatsoever and these are radial contact bearings that is totally normal you should feel a little slight amount of play because we want this thing to run like that

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Also in BBInfinite exists to elevate the bottom bracket to the high-performance, low-maintenance, reliable component it is meant to be. Rid yourself of press fit bottom bracket creaks and pops. BBInfinite is silent performance.