June 16, 2025

Restoring my Peugeot PX-10 - Bottom Bracket

First, remove the crank. I have another page on this.

Once the crank is off, you want to go to the left side. (The right side has the crank gear-rings). On this side you should see a ring with 6 square-cut notches. The correct way to loosen this is with Park Tool HCW-5, which is a $22 purchase. Or you can use a hammer and a screwdriver you don't care much about.

Once you get this ring loose, the cup inside of it can be unscrewed using the holes that are in it. Use some needle-nose pliers or whatever else your ingenuity comes up with to unscrew this.

Don't mess with the other (right) side. That is the fixed cup and it just stays where it is. Once you get the ring and cup out of the left side, you either have a bunch of balls fall out or you have all the balls in a nice retainer. Pull the bearing out, then the axle, then you can pull the bearing out from the fixed side.

Clean it all up, and if nothing is damaged, grease it all up and put it back together. Setting the "tension" is a bit of an art. Not too tight and not too loose. Just right. I have to err a bit on the side of being loose without play to get it right.

The final trick is to tighten the lock ring without also messing up the tension.

Torque the crank bolts to 40-50 N-m (45 N-m is 33 ft-lbs). Some say 29-37 ft-lbs. Absolutely put grease (or better, anti-sieze) on the bolts
Note that these bolts are metric M8-1.0.

Some say not to put grease on the axle tapers. This is apparently an ancient topic for debate. I vote for a very thin film of anti-sieze.

What grease? People say either marine grease or Phil Wood grease if you are competitive, but read this:

I think Phil Wood grease is an excellent product and it always worked very well for me. But I doubt that Phil Wood has Grease Scientists who are staying awake at night perfecting their proprietary formula. It always seemed more likely to me that Phil Wood is buying and repackaging a high quality marine grease.

Several years ago, after doing some research into marine grease, I started using Peak Synthetic Marine Grease. It is blue-green in color and I have yet to find anything that distinguishes it — in appearance or performance — from Phil Wood grease. I have no idea if it is the same product or not, but it seems to hold up pretty well.

Removing the fixed cup

First of all, you rarely would need to do this, if ever. Secondly, this is reverse (left hand thread).

This are often glued in and will take a lot of torque to remove. This video documents the "Sheldon Brown" method, which uses a 2 inch long 5/8 bolt along with a stack of lock washers, and of course a nut and washer.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's bike pages / tom@mmto.org