How to Loosen a Bearing Bottom Bracket

Lennard Zinn shows you how to install a bottom bracket with loose bearings

How to Loosen a Bearing Bottom Bracket I did want to show you have an original type of a button bracket. This is what early mountain bikes all have. With this system, you have just one set of bearings on either side. There are balls and the retainer or they can be completely loose. You don’t actually need this retainer. This one tightens in and of course this one is the reverse thread and so it threads in counterclockwise. And one of the big problems with this system was installing the fixed cap properly. If you are a home mechanic because the only tool that you would have to do it would be this tool and there’s really not enough purchase on it to really tight is tighten this tight, to not loosen up without it slipping off there. On the other side the bearings would go in, cover them with grease, and put them on the spindle. Run it through there, put the cap on, on the other side. Of course you’d want the bearings to be clean and in here you clean this completely and put it in your grease in. This is the plastic sleeve you put in on the bearings go in here. Thread that in and you tight it in, the pin tool and you go until the bearings are snug up and then with the lock ring on. Once you get the adjustment right in you check and make sure that there’s no play in there but it’s also free to turn. There’s no binding and you hold the position of the adjustable cap at the pin tool and you tighten the lock ring with the two spinners until it’s very tight and it’s not going to loosen up. The fixed cap is already tightened in on the other side and then if some plate develops again where sometimes happens because you’re tightening the lock ring against the shell and sure pushes this outward a little bit then you can turn both of them together a bit or you loosen the lock ring, tighten in the adjustable cap and then tighten the lock ring down until you get the adjustment perfect. That’s how you do it old style down at the button bracket.