Thrill Factory Europe Pilot Edžus Treimanis, World #4 and former Olympian, European Champion and World Cup Time Trial Winner, shares his experience with the C-Bear Brand. The Thrill Factory Europe Team is stoked to have this brand supporting us.
More and more modern frames these days are comming out with the modern 30mm Bottom brackets and so is our Thrill Agent BMX Frame.
The 30 mm BB provides more stiffness and strenght for the cranks and the bearings than the more traditional 24mm BB system. The bigger BB also gives room for bigger seat tubes, down tubes and chainstays if needed to produce a stiffer/stronger frame.
So 30mm BB’s mean all good things, but you can still run into a little problem. You will not find a lot of cranks in the market with the speciffic 30mm spindle to use for your modern frame. Most of the more trusted crank sets in the market (Shimano DXR, Answer Pro cranks, etc…) are still made with a 24 mm spindle.
That is a problem I myself had to deal with. I have the new “Thrill Agent” BMX frame with the Press Fit 30mm bottom bracket in it and an Answer Pro crankset with a 24mm spindle. To use them together first I tried the BB30 adapter that fits in the PF30 Bottom bracket and allows to use the 24mm cranks. It was working, but the performance wasn’t very good. Spinning was very stiff because of a lot of drag from using “bearings into bearings” with the adapter. I wasn’t happy with that, not to even mention the extra dead weight the adapters bring.
Searching for a better solution I came across a brand called “C-bear”. They make all kinds of ceramic bicycle bearings including a wide range of BB’s with all kinds of sizes and specifications. They also happened to have a solution for my situation – a PF30-20r bottom bracket that fits perfectly in my frame and at the same time supports my 24mm cranks. The one piece (istead of two piece adaptors) light weight BB together with the quality of ceramic bearings give my favorite cranks a very smooth spinn and the stiffness of a 30mm BB.
Since I have first put in those PF30- 24mm c-bear BB’s I havent used anything else and probably never will while using this frame and crank setup. And even if I’ll need to change any brands or parts, I’m sure I will be able to find another c-bear BB option to use on that setup to still continue experience the smoothness of quality ceramic bearings.
Check out c-bear.com to find the best bearings for your bike.
