T47 BB's - here to stay or a passing 'standard'?

[OreoCookie]

@Power13

Not necessarily…depending on the materials, construction technique, tolerances, etc. fewer parts can often mean MORE manufacturing costs and complications. That would seem to be the case in PF BB’s.

Well, we don’t know how well T47 actually fares, we will need to wait a few years, I guess. So I’d be cautious to say that moving to T47 BBs will solve BB problems or improve the situation. As I said, I am very skeptical since the bike manufacturers do not want to solve the underlying problem, not sticking to tolerances, but sidestep it. Plus, top-end frames seem to get more expensive each year.

You could also look at it this way: rather than improving the implementation of a concept that is known to work, manufacturers opted to introduce another standard, where they will have to start from scratch.

@Power13

Well, I kinda do have some numbers. Again, in 10 years working in the bike biz (pre-PF), I can’t think of a single frame I saw warrantied for creaking BB issues. I can think of a few that that had issues with galvanic corrosion, but no manufacturing process is 100% defect free.

Are those numbers anecdotal? yes and no. I worked for the second largest (IBD) bike supplier adn then the largest bike supplier in the business. So while the numbers are not necessarily “scientific” they cover a pretty wide set of data.

Thanks for giving some context, and I did not want to suggest that I want to quibble about numbers in my earlier post. I did and do own bikes with threaded BBs, in my experience (as an end user) they seem to work as well as PF BBs. Although all frames with threaded BBs are/were metal frames, and the move to PF BBs was inherently connected to carbon frames becoming mainstream.