Some time ago we profiled C-Bear, a Belgian company who manufactures ceramic bearing bottom brackets. The company whose name bears the moniker “Silent Speed Performance” was founded in 2008, and features a full product line including bottom brackets, derailleur pulleys, wheelset and headset bearings. C-Bear is a long standing sponsor of the Lotto Soudal professional cycling team, and supplied over 20% of the teams at the 2015 Tour de France with their products. If you’re given the opportunity to see a pro’s bike up close, pay close attention to the bottom bracket, you may be surprised. Click through to read more about C-Bear’s NoCreak Bottom Bracket solutions and other products…
With C-Bear’s bottom bracket designs, gone are the worries of rings, spacer thickness, wave washers and in what order they need to be installed. Case in point is C-Bear’s BB30A bottom bracket, pictured above. The Cannondale BB30A design is similar to BB30, but caters to the wider 73mm bottom bracket shell. The BB30A bottom bracket shell is 5mm wider on the non-drive size, and typically relies on thin spacers and/or wave washers sandwiched between the bearings and crank arms to take up any slack. All of those spacers can lead to creaks and noise.
C-Bear’s design does away with the Band-aid solution and features one piece aluminum construction on all of their bottom brackets, eliminating creaking and the need for Loctite.
C-Bear puts the bearings as close to the cranks as possible for maximum stability and stiffness. One of the company’s later designs is the PF30 – Rotor 30mm bottom bracket, suitable for Rotor 3D+, 3DF, Rex1 and Rex2 cranksets. In a stock configuration, the bearings are pressed into the frame. The C-Bear PF30 solution places the bearings outside the frame and next to the crank arm to maximize stiffness and power transfer, simultaneously eliminating the need for adapters and spacers. C-Bear applies the same concept of their PF30 – Rotor 30 solution to BBR, BB30A and PF30A (Cannondale Supersix EVO for 2016).
C-Bear manufactures bottom brackets for BSA-ITA, BB30, BB386, BBRight, OSBB and many other standards. Their handy Bottom Bracket Finder helps take some of the confusion out of the selection process.
Check out C-Bear’s PF30 Rotor product installation video and what Lotto’s Steven Van Olmen (we interviewed him at this year’s Tour Down Under) has to say about C-Bear’s bottom brackets.
In addition to bottom brackets, C-Bear produces a full line of replacement bottom bracket bearings for those looking to upgrade their existing components. Their bearing product line extends to wheelset bearings, with upgrades for wheelsets from companies such as American Classic, Campagnolo, Lightweight, Mavic, Shimano, Zipp and many more. Rounding out the company’s bearing line are replacement headset bearings for Cannondale Lefty, Eddy Merckx, Pinarello bicycles and others.
C-Bear also produce replacement pulleys suitable for Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo drivetrains. Special mention must be given to their full ceramic and titanium pulley offerings!
In addition to producing high quality cycling products, C-Bear gives back to the community and promotes equal opportunities in cycling:
- Women’s Cycling – Sponsorship of Bridie O’Donnell’s winning hour record attempt, riding 46.882 kilometers on January 22, 2016.
- Support of the first African UCI MTB team – ACE-The Sufferfest Lesotho MTB team.
- Sponsorship of parathletes such as Peter Genyn (wheelchair racer), Arnout Matthys (leg amputee who completed the grueling 2015 Crocodile Trophy in Australia) and Jetze Plat (para-cycling and para-triathlon).
- Sponsorship of BikesnotBombs.org and the Ability Bikes Cooperative in Ghana.
C-Bear pride themselves on their KISS principle – Keep it Simple and Straight-Forward, with all products backed with a simple KISS two year warranty.
Article by Gravel Cyclist. Jayson O’Mahoney is the Gravel Cyclist: A website about the Gravel Cycling Experience.
