wrecked bearings

brashy

For a while my bike has been in creasingly hard to pedal. i thought it was to do with the brakes, but whilest cleaning my bracket i noticed the bearings were done up extremely tight and there are deep gouges cut out of the areas where the bearings run. what is the cheapest soloution? should i buy new brackets, or replace the internal parts?

Wooliferkins

Put a sealed cartridge bottom bracket in it. They are fairly cheap with sealed bearings and should last you a few thousand miles. You need to know your axle length, I guess the axle is square taper at the ends? The numbers, eg, 68-108 refer to the shell width(bit of the frame it screws into) and the axle length. A 68mm wide shell is usually English threaded ie a left hand thread on side and right handed the other.