The Erickson Ti B/B is what we refer to as a "fixed length spindle with Dual adjustable cups" design. Erickson has tried another approach to stiffening the Titanium spindle against its intrinsic flexing characteristic. The method is similar to the Boone and Sampson design which use an over sized center or core.
Both the Boone and Sampson designs start with an oversized billet in rod form and cut flutes across it to reduce weight. The Erickson approach differs by bulging the core area. The Ti is drilled through to reduce weight with an outer diameter of 17mm. Equidistant from each end the the diameter increases sharply to 28.6mm. The angle at its base of the rise is 90 degrees making a shoulder for the sealed bearing cartridge to butt against.
The "core" area of increased diameter has a somewhat thinner wall that "rings" when tapped. The core piece is said to be made of Ti 3Al 2.5V tubing that is "sonic" welded to the spindle ends which are machined from Ti 6AL 4V rod stock. The cups are machined from aluminum rod with a channel cut at the spindle exit point that seats an O-ring to prevent contamination of the interior.
Each of the Japanese IJK 6902RS sealed bearing cartridges are machine pressed into their Black anodized cup. Once the drive side cup is installed, an included tight fitting water sleeve is pushed from the left side into the bearing cup. Next the spindle is sidled into place and the left cup is installed. Erickson has drilled the outer face of each cup so the Park BBT-2 tool can be used to tighten the cup in place.
Lockrings machined from 3.6mm thick aluminum plate are used to cinch the cup in place. Each of the lockrings has six equidistant square notches for a lockring spanner to grip and tighten. A tube of Finish Line Ti Prep is included to be used as thread compound. Unlike other makers, the cups on the B/B are not marked left and right. The Erickson B/B comes with very detailed instructions that tell you half way through to notice which cup came off what side out of the box relative to a marking on the spindle which is covered by the water sleeve. Most people will already have taken the parts off the spindle long before they read the directions.
The Erickson comes with spindle lengths of 103mm, 107mm, 113mm, 116mm, 122mm, or 127mm. The B/B can come for 68mm shell in English threads or a 70mm shell width for Italian threads. It does not come with crank bolts. The 133 x 68mm version weighs 139 grams
Spindle Length-03-07-13-16-22-27/Thread -E -I $Price in Catalog
