Till death do us part...

I was on my way home as usual one evening and just as I was accelerating away from an intersection right around the corner of my house, I felt my left pedal give... the whole left hand crank arm gave way and was swinging freely independently of the right.  Something was wrong.  I immediately thought it was the cotter pins that had given way, however they were nice and tight...  I was able to have a look when I got home and it appeared that the BB axle had split in two somehow.

 So, off with the drive side crank...



And it appears that I was correct, the axle itself had sheared right through somehow.  Thankfully this didn't happen when I was pushing hard on the pedals out of the saddle or it could have resulted in an accident.  The bearings were a little rough as well, not a good reflection on the quality of this piece.

It wasn't that long ago that I had specially sought out this BB, as it's quite difficult to get a sealed cartridge BB with a cottered axle.  Luckily I was able to find a replacement unit, this time I went with a brand name Sunrace/Sturmey Archer unit.  I've generally had good experiences with the Sunrace gear, as they make all the modern Sturmey Archer stuff.  Hopefully this unit will last as long.  As a side note though, the drive side offset is slightly better, this moves the chainline in a few mm now so it's about 42mm which is even better than before when it was 44mm.

The Sunrace/Sturmey Archer BB has different bearings with a blue coloured cover, it's marked "163010 - 2RS".  The 163010 denotes the bearing size, and the 2RS means that it has double rubber seals.  The BB itself is marked as made in Taiwan which inspires a bit of confidence.  As a subtle difference the threaded cups are plastic instead of aluminium.  I'm not too fussed either way as long as it doesn't squeak and I don't have to touch it for a while.

 Now I have to file cotter pins to get the crank to sit nice...

All done!  This is the first time I've ever broken a BB axle or anything in the crank area.  Hopefully this BB should last a while yet as I hate fiddling with cotter pin cranks.