>>1355063>>1355102>>1355128>>1355132>>1355144Thanks guys for the advice yesterday on my bike here:
>>1355032So today I took apart the bottom bracket with my dad's tools he lent me.
Remember this is a cup and cone bottom bracket, not a cartridge one. One ball bearing in particular was very pitted and almost squarish, but the rest looked pretty okay. I degreased all the bearings and both cups and cleaned the all off, and the same for the spindle, then set about reassembling it with fresh grease. I moved the only really bad ball bearing over to the "non-adjustable" side (drive side) because it has a bearing cage so I thought its deformed shape would be less important there. Unfortunately after putting it back together it still grinds like a motherfucker and doesn't turn very smoothly. It does turn though.
Anyway, the main issue in the first place was that there was too much PLAY in the bottom bracket, and this was causing my chain to rub on both inside surfaces of my front derailleur. Turned out that tightening the non-drive side cup fixed this mostly - taking apart the whole bottom bracket didn't really do anything. However, despite tightening the adjustable cup to the point where I don't think there's any play anymore, it still sometimes rubs.
Also another issue is that my bottom bracket spindle seems to be a weird size. 124.5mm, size "3S". Weirdly, Sheldon Brown's Japanese bottom bracket size database has sizes for a 3S which don't match mine. BUT he links to an Indian standard sheet (which he says is the same) which has 3S sizes which DO match my spindle EXACTLY. So maybe I have an Indian spindle? Or Sheldon's table of Japanese sizes is just wrong. Because I have Japanese cups (Tange, pic related) and Japanese cranks (Sugino). Nothing on the spindle itself indicates a manufacturer, but it does have "3S" printed on it. Sheldon's database, with link to Indian PDF, here:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/bbsize.html 