http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/hope ... prod118519http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/hope ... prod130426http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/hope ... prod147501After running pressfit bottom bracket bikes for a number of years and trying a number of different brands to try and find one that would fit my needs (not creeky, metal cups so stronger, good quality bearings ...ect) I ended up buying the hope pressfit bb.
The bb that shimano and sram are cheap plastic through away items costing £30ish so at £86 the hope bb is expensive, to add to the cost I actually bought the ceramic one at £113. To be fair I did look at the sram ceramic bb as well and that's at £135! At leat with hope you can just replace the bearings rather than the how thing. I have also run a number of random brand bb that I found on eBay, metal cups and ceramic bearings but I have still found they have failed for different reasons.
The other thing with the hope bb is that you need a special tool to install it in the frame
adding another £40. But this tool is one of the reasons why the hope bb might be the best bb you can buy (I was lucky, I asked around and one of group had already bought it so I could borrow it). With other pressfit bb you have to press the two bearings into the frame and it's the cranks that keep the bb under tension in the frame but this can lead to creeking. The hope bb has the bearings pressed into the frame as other bb do but the central sleeve is machined in such a way that it threads into the drive side from the non drive side pulling both bearing into each other, this means that the crank do not need to be over tightened to keep the bb in place. It's almost like they have engineered a threaded bb into a pressfit design. The special tool is used to install the whole bb but it's only the central sleeve that really needs the tool for installation.
So it probably takes only another minute to install over a normal pressfit bb, jobs easy enough to do in half hour with the fit tools, lube and cleaners. I will be running this on my winter hardtail so will see how this compares to the other bb that I have run.