Don’t ditch the press-fit BB
uch fanfare has accompanied a recent shift back towards BSA threaded bottom bracket systems on road bikes. After more than a decade of various press-fit standards, big brands such as Specialized are designing around threaded BBs again, to the point its flagship Tarmac uses one, as does its newest Allez Sprint (see page 13). Previous iterations of those bikes used Specialized’s OSBB 61 press-fit standard. (Top pub factoid: BSA stands for Birmingham Small Arms, which used to
