Campagnolo Ultra-Torque Creaking Solved!

December 28, 2022

 

We may not be able to pronounce Campagnolo correctly (nor do we roll our R's when ordering a burrito at Taco Bell), but we understand exactly why Campy's amazingly competent Ultra-Torque cranks tend to creak and drop chains. Check out the vid to see how BBInfinite fixed what ails Ultra-Torque to unleash this great system's true potential. BBInfinite is here to solve the bottom bracket creaking and squeaking that's ruining you ride. BBInfinite doesn't just fix a bottom bracket creak, we deliver the highest spin performance of any bottom bracket system out there. Faster and creak-free? Absolutely, with BBInfinite. 

 

Today we're talking about Campy UltraTorque, which is the most popular form of Campy crank you're ever going to find, so come on in here and you will see that its signature feature is the hirth joint. Now the way a hearth joint works is it automatically forces everything to center. So that it is always going to be perfectly aligned it can't be off like this you'll see this in uh there's another crank the older specialized like the Gen 1 Fact cranks have the same kind of hirth joint on them. Okay, so the thing to note about this is unlike a Shimano crank which one side arm of the non-drive side arm can move in and out to compensate for a width difference. Once this is bolted together it is a fixed width between here. There's just no getting around that whatsoever and that is why Campy did something very interesting. When they went to their external cup design right here, so this was all the rage at a time which this is part of a group of cranks we here at BBInfinite called Legacy cranks okay it's all the cranks it's a Shimano Hollotwech 2. Of course UltraTorque and then you have the Campy GXP, Campy - excuse me SRAM GXP, which they're all based on an old like 68mm wide bottom bracket shell okay and then it has cups screwed on the outside so that it ends up having this final width just like what do you know just sort of almost exactly like that so and it goes in like so anybody who's familiar with camping knows how this works you go ahead and you're supposed to put the wave washer in there which I'm not going to do right now and then you push the other crank arm in and then it and then it meshes the hirth joint. Now I want you to look very closely here- you see this play see how much play there is in that? Okay this is the Achilles heel of the UltraTorque design okay Campy didn't have a choice they had to put a wave washer inside of here because they never knew what the final dimension is going to be okay yeah ostensibly is supposed to be 68mm nominal or a 70mm if it's Italian, but it could you know if you face it a little too much it could be narrower if it's got paint on the outside something you didn't face it could be a little wider so to ensure the crank would always work properly can't be had to put this like three quarters of a millimeter one millimeter or so hedge in there so they put the wave washer in there to compensate right this causes a problem the first problem is a creaking problem and this is how it happens okay we got this bike in here we're converting it over to camping with the crank in it right now you come around here and take a look if you can focus right here you see that the way I'm pushing it in you can see it moving and then in relationship to the front derailleur you can see that it's it can actually move outward a little bit like that okay this is why it can creak all right because as you're riding the bike the crank can actually move a little bit especially when you're doing this number the crank can move a little bit and cause uh cause creaking problem because anything that's moving can creak this is why everybody gobs a bunch of grease in here stuff like that that ameliorates it for a while but it's a temporary fix at best now we didn't do it this way because it is another serious problem with the wave washer in corporation with that axial plunging that's capab- that can happen is if it's an eps it has a very powerful front derailleur when it goes from the low to the big ring it can actually over shift and kick the chain off the outside because the chainring is actually the derailleur is actually moving the chainring axially and then suddenly it snaps back under spring pressure and it drops it drops the chain off the outside so bb infinite didn't do this go this route what we did is uh thanks to Campy's uh amazing machining and consistency over the years this distance between the bearings varies only slightly maybe point two point zero two in production from year over on year so what that allowed us to do was it allowed us to make the uh the board the bore distance on either side almost the exact distance it needs to be for the Campy crank to just fit in here very precisely. Now you need to make sure that the bearing is going in very squarely right here okay boom done and then I gotta present that gotta make sure to show that logo and then right here boom goes in right and then I'm gonna go ahead and go ahead and tighten this bolt down a little bit right there just to put the crank together and then I want to show you this right here all right now that this is together I want to show you that we have a little bit of play as well all right there is not enough room in there for a wave washer anymore okay because the wave washer's about a millimeter thick or so uh we don't even have that much gap in there okay we've got much smaller gap than that we have just enough to make up for slight variances over the years in campy UltraTorque cranks okay and the way we get rid of this play is we use retaining compound on the outside of the bearing all right some people uh might say well why are you doing that or is that a good application let's go ahead and take a look at the picture right here and you will see look at that oh wait what about this one this is Loctite oh look at that yeah right this is exactly how that product is supposed to be used alright so what does this do this means that once that Loctite or vibrate right here cures out around these bearings this play is eliminated so now we just cured the two main problems with the UltraTorque design that is the tendency to create because it can move actually now the bearings are glued a lot of people have the same glue but they have a retaining compound holding them in place so it can't move back and forth and then you don't have those mis-shift problems that a lot of people can experience very mysterious although I've just explained it with um with eps because of that incredibly powerful front derailleur now we'll get into some other details about campy UltraTorque in the next video

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Also in BBInfinite exists to elevate the bottom bracket to the high-performance, low-maintenance, reliable component it is meant to be. Rid yourself of press fit bottom bracket creaks and pops. BBInfinite is silent performance.