bottom bracket

Officially launched in 1988, Sram is a relatively young company with a lot of design ingenuity and the original maker of the Grip Shift. They’ve been making their way up through the bike component industry, proving themselves to be a reliable company providing a reliable product.

And they look good too.

They have also forged biking alliances with several companies, including RockShox, Quarq, Avid, Truvativ and Zipp.

So let’s start from the bottom up.

S-Series

 This is Sram’s entry level components group. Here you will find a series of parts which consist of brake levers, shifters, cassettes, chains, crankarms and derailleurs for road, cyclocross and track bikes. The series comes in 8, 9 and 10 speeds and even offer cantilever brakes from Avid. 

Quarq

One of the ways you can keep your bike riding smoothly is by giving it a good cleaning, both inside and out. Overhauling a bottom bracket will most likely not be in your weekly cleaning regimen and depending on how you ride, you might not even have to really look at it too much. But it is a good thing to know how to do when the time comes.

For this task, you will need several things:

1. Crank puller
2. 17 mm open end wrench
3. Adjustable wrench
4. Bottom bracket wrench
5. Pin Spanner
6. Hooked lockring wrench
7. 36 mm wrench
8. Solvent 
9. Grease

Keep rags on hand so that you can keep your hands and your bike clean. Small trays or containers are also handy when you take out the parts, and especially the ball bearings, so that you won’t lose them. And buying ball bearings can be a pain in the ass.

This is an early episode where Jim goes through parts of the bicycle.  Jim starts with the front wheel, rim, tire, tube, spokes and hub, then moves on to the fork and brake and brake calipers. 

Next he checks out the handlebars, brake levers, and bar tape.  On to the stem, and headset which transitions into the frame, which consists of the headtube, top tube, down tube, seat tube, chain stay and seat stay. 

Which brings us to the seatpost and saddle.  Moving on to the drivetrain made up of the crank, chain, cassette, rear derailleur and front derailleur.  What allows the crank to turn is the bottom bracket and that's pretty much what we're working with.  See you on the road, bitches!

Joe's much less suave, and much more annoying rendition of "Part's of a Bicycle":