I’ve gotten many comments both off and on-line about my various postings dealing with adapting Campagnolo OS fit cups for Ultra-Torque cranksets and Cervelo’s BBright bottom brackets, and I sincerely hope everyone has found it useful. However, after yet another case of “wandering cup”, I’ve given up on the Campagnolo adapters and gone native.
Sort of.
Late last year I snagged a deal on a Rotor 3D+ crankset from TotalCycling.com in Ireland. It’s been sitting on my shelf waiting for the opportune moment to install it. I’ve been hesitant to give up my Campagnolo Ultra-Torque compact and the phenomenal shifting of X.P.S.S – while I don’t often drop into the small chain ring (a function of more of the local topography than fitness), when I do, it never misses a beat.
But my bike had been making funny sounds as of late. A close examination showed the drive side OS fit cup managed to work itself loose yet again by approximately 2mm outboard. Curses.
Knocking out the cups was a trivial matter. Cleaning out the residual loctite 609 less so. Nevertheless, after an hour of diligent scraping with a razor blade followed by a few quick passes with a scotch-brite 000 pad and acetone, I was left with a clean bottom bracket to install the new bottom bracket. Ta-da.
All cleaned up and ready to go.
For the new bottom bracket, I went high end – the Chris King PF30, steel bearings, in black. While King does not officially support using their PF30 in the BBright shell (the inner sleeve is not long enough to accommodate the 79mm shell width), there was no other reason why I could see that it would not work if I opted not to install the sleeve. Yes, the risk of crap entering the bearings increases, but I’m not planning to ride cyclo-cross.
Necessary bits – Park Press, King Adapter Bushings, Locite Primer and 609
The PF30 is amazingly well made piece of kit, as is everything else made by Chris King. Proprietary machined bushings are necessary to press the face of the bottom bracket so that the angular contact bearings are not damaged during install. I purchased mine from Ebay.
Installed !
Wrangling the Park HHP-2 is no trivial matter, particularly with the bearing cup dripping Loctite on the floor, but working carefully, the install went without a hitch. A few nasty popping sounds ensued…
Rotor 3D+ Installed
Installation of the Rotor 3D+ went pretty smoothly after I removed the 1mm spacer from the NDS because of excessive pre-load on the bottom bracket (I could barely turn it after torquing the nut to spec). I opted to use only the adjustable nut to set the pre-load and everything spun smoothly. I needed to drop the front derailleur by about 2mm to bring it to within the Campy spec of 1.5mm – 3mm off the chainring.
So, first impressions of the Rotor 3D+ ? It’s stiff as hell and about 50 grams lighter than the Chorus Carbon I was using. It does not shift as well, but not terribly either. Some fine tuning of the FD will be necessary.
My first 90km ride went without a hitch, the crank spins smoothly and the seal drag has noticeably decreased. Hopefully this will be the end of my problems with BBright.
My 40 Year Old Legs 
Hello,
Just read your last post and I wanting to go campagnolo on an R5. I saw that you used a PF30 BB in the end. Did you ever look in to Praxys Works converters? They have one for campagnolo but it’s PF30 and they state they don’t support BBRight. Do you think this might work?
Yes, I looked into the Praxis works converters. It’s a brilliant idea, but won’t work due to the width of the BBright shell. So no luck. You may want to consider the Campagnolo Over-Torque crankset. Campagnolo dosen’t specifically support BBRight for Over-Torque, but many have made it work with either aftermarket cups or using the Rotor spacers for BBright. Good luck. For now, I’m happy, although front shifting could be better. Cheers.
bbinfinite has a bb for cervelo bbright campagnolo… just ordered one…