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This evening when beginning assembly of a friend’s new snow bike I ran into a bit of frustration while fitting the bottom bracket. Due to the design of the Truvativ Howitzer Team BB that he chose it’s not possible to use a Park Tool BBT-19 bottom bracket tool to torque it to spec. Because the spindle has to be inserted before both cups are fitted and the tool itself isn’t very deep, the spindle keeps the tool from fitting on the cups for final torqueing. To finish the job I instead had to use a standard box-type wrench for external BBs. This did the job, but it would be nice to know that I got the torque spot on.
The stuff shown above is the initial assembly of Bob Costello’s new Carver titanium snow bike, and includes an E-Type front derailleur. This is the first time I’ve fitted one of these derailleurs, and it was a pretty easy task. However, as I was warned, the Finish Line Anti-Sieze (Ti-Prep) compound which needs to be applied to all metal fastener surface is quite a pain. It seems to be a fine metallic powder suspended in a grease, and the resulting compound is sticky, staining, and it ends up just about everywhere. Unlike grease it’s not easy to wipe off of anything but metal and solid plastic surfaces; it soaks quickly into skin and is even difficult to remove from nitrile gloves. Thankfully ProGold Lubricants’ Shop Towels do an amazing job of cleaning it up from both frames and hands.
Unfortunately, we ran into a little quirk with the acquired parts which put the build on hold for a bit, but I imagine that’ll be remedied soon.