CeramicSpeed Ceramic Race Coated Bottom Bracket - BB30 to GXP (SRAM)

CeramicSpeed Ceramic Race Coated Bottom Bracket - BB30 to GXP (SRAM) Info

Installing a super-low friction bottom bracket that mates your BB30 frame to your favorite 24/22.5mm diameter spindle crank is easy with The CeramicSpeed Ceramic Race Coated BB30 SRAM GXP Bottom Bracket. This will work with SRAM and Quarq cranks.

The BB30 standard is the bottom bracket shell design that helped the bike industry break clear of the threaded bottom brackets that had been standard pretty much since the beginning. BB30 was created by Cannondale and was made freely available. As it not only made cranks and bottom brackets lighter and stiffer, but opened up frame design possibilities, manufacturers took advantage of it. It’s based on having a 30mm crank spindle running inside a 42mm bottom bracket shell, unheard of at the time, and the 68mm (road) or 73mm (mtb) width of most bottom brackets of the era. The bottom bracket shell acts as the bearing cups, and there are snap rings sitting in grooves that the bearings get pressed against. The only limitation was that you’d need to get either a BB30 crank or clunky adapter cups that would be pressed between the crank and the bottom bracket.

This solution mates external bearing cups to a threaded sleeve that goes through the BB30 shell. It’s easy to install, easy to service, and oil-slick smooth. You can use conventional bottom bracket tools to install it. The cups and sleeve are made by Rotor and CeramicSpeed presses in their bearings in Denmark. The result is a conventional CeramicSpeed bottom bracket.

CeramicSpeed is an innovator in bearing technology. The bike industry’s move from cup-and-cone bearings to sealed cartridge bearings made installation and maintenance easier, but performance was a mixed bag. CeramicSpeed mastered the use of ceramic ball bearings pressed into hardened steel races for both reduced friction and improved durability. You can go faster with less maintenance. Great things both. These are the reasons why pro teams seek out ceramic bearings. CeramicSpeed has the pro teams coming to them, begging for bearings. Even the ones they don’t sponsor might well be using them not to get left behind.

If you replace all your bike’s bearings with CeramicSpeed, you could be looking at a savings of 25 seconds in 40km if you’re riding at 48kph. The savings goes up to two minutes if you’re riding at 32kph. Extend that to an Ironman-length ride, and the savings could vary from 1:50, if you’re going 48kph to nine minutes if you’re going 32kph.

CeramicSpeed utilizes Grade 3 Silicon Nitride balls that possess the best possible surface finish and roundness. In testing, the balls are 400% smoother, 128% harder, and 58% lighter than standard steel balls found in most bike components. They’re more than 100% smoother and 15% harder than standard ceramic balls. The balls are installed into hardened steel races in dust-free clean rooms and then checked again before assembly is complete. Not only is low friction the result, but so is increased bearing life. Like three to five times longer than standard bearings.

Another step they take in assuring the lowest-possible frictional drag is using grease they designed as lubricant. It comes in the bearings and a syringe comes with the bearings as well.

Part of CeramicSpeed’s commitment to having the lowest-friction bearings on the market is keeping up their research and development. That led them to a special metallic coating that can be applied three microns thick on the races. It makes the treated surface 80% harder than hardened steel. In terms of friction, the already low-friction CeramicSpeed bearings with the treatment see friction reduced by over 50%. In terms of service life, these coated bearings last even longer, like over 60% longer, than the standard CeramicSpeed bearings. Better yet, the coating means the races better resist contamination from water, dirt, degreaser, etc. Aka, the risk of bearing failure due to corrosion has been reduced to near zero. They can even run without grease or oil, though CeramicSpeed recommends their blue all-around grease for regular use, and their TT grease for achieving the lowest-possible friction.

The bottom bracket width is 68mm. The spindle diameter is 24mm on the drive side, 22.5mm on the non-drive. Included with the kit are: bottom bracket, spacers, grease, and sticker sheet.

The CeramicSpeed Coated BB30 SRAM GXP Bottom Bracket gets GXP-axled cranks spinning like they’ve never gone before.