Home-made External BB Remover

An external bottom bracket (BB) remover is not an expensive tool, but on a Sunday afternoon when you’re hunting down that irritating click, click, click, click somewhere in the BB area, you’ll probably find that you don’t have one in your toolkit. What now?

Don’t despair; external BBs are far less fussy about the tools needed to work on them than internal BBs. Just about any crude tool will work, including an adjustable pliers or monkey wrench. However, both these only grip the BB on two sides and the risk of slipping and surface damage is great. On smaller round screw-on components such as on pedals, pliers, a vice or monkey wrench should definitely not be used. They’ll just squash the component which makes it eve harder to remove.

What you need is a chain grip tool. Make one.

Take a short length of old bicycle chain. Wrap it around the BB and grip the two sides with a vice-grip or adjustable pliers. Now twist so that the vice grip’s jaws move one end of the chain slightly underneath the other, as in the photo, so that it pulls the chain tighter with the turning force applied to the pliers. This will ensure that the chain doesn’t slide on the BB and it’ll easily unscrew the BB.

Caution: BBs have a left hand thread on the right-hand side cup. This means that it unscrews clockwise, something that is completely counter intuitive and can get you into trouble when removing a BB. You may think that you’re loosening it but in fact, you’re screwing it in tighter.

The left side has a normal right-hand thread and unscrews counter clockwise.

This is why any good but occasional bicycle mechanic always keeps a ruined BB and ruined pedal at hand. Pedals have a left hand thread on the left side – opposite to the BB.

However, it is not something that you’ll remember unless you frequently remove these things. Keeping old parts in your garage lets you confirm thread direction before you start to remove BBs and pedals.