When I was reading up what to get when we were building up our Surly Long Haul Truckers I came across the Hollowtech II’s. I did only find good reviews about them and everyone I spoke to highly recommend these bottom brackets.
I have now cycle just a tad over 5,700 miles on my LHT, mostly commuting, touring to come. But yesterday I started to feel some play when pedalling. At first I was thinking that this was the Crank Brothers pedals which were playing up again. They were so I swapped my pedals over so that I can fix them later, thinking that that would be it of today’s fettling.
Though today I decided that it was about time to give the Surly a good scrub behind the ears and a check over, since I got rather dirty when swapping pedals yesterday. While scrubbing I found out that the Hollowtech II was rocking and that the left hand side, or is it leg?, bearings were very loose, or rather gone. I could move the whole thing around very easily and there was much black grime, muck, dirt which felt like there were metal bits in it.
I’m sure that I fitted …

A few years back when I decided to go clip less, I search for something that was easy to clip into and easy to learn to use. I don’t like the “proper cycling” shoes as you can’t just jump off your bicycle and have a walk as you please, so I was looking for MTB style cycling shoes. Out of them all stood the Crank Brothers’ eggbeater, since they are four sided and also looked cool and simple.
Four sided : The four sided design made them extremely easy to learn to use. Simple to clip in, no flipping the pedal around to be able to clip in, e.g. just put your foot down and you are clipped in. The four sided design also meant that if you walk around in your cycling shoes or get mud on the pedals, the mud will just fall right off and you still can clip in.
Look : the eggbeaters just looks way cool, great design and the feel of them is like something that will last long and can handle a beating.
Simple : Being new to the game of cycling clip less and cycling shoes, back then, they looked well simple compared …