Deore crank: spider coming loose!

[Travers Waker]

Hi.

I've got a Deore Hollowtech crankset, just over a year old.
In that year, I've put some serious milage onto it, but no
other abuse.

I was very unimpressed to discover that the spider is now
loose (has play) on the crank arm. I think they're attached
to each other with splines, but it doesn't look like they're
designed to come apart, so I can't really check that.

What I'd like to do is take the spider off the crank arm,
and then put them back together again with some bonding
agent (Loctite/Epoxy?) on the splines. Has anyone managed to
get the spider off the crank arm of Deore cranks before
(without writing off the crank set)? If so, how?

The dealer that sold the cranks to me (as part of a complete
bike) told me that the guy who evaluates warranty claims
said that this was "normal wear and tear", and not covered
by warranty. I've been thinking about this: How can it be
normal if the orginal chain rings are still okay to use a
new chain (they are), but the actual cranks need replacing?
Maybe Deore cranks have bolt-on chainrings so you can
replace the arms and spider regularly, but re-use the same
chain rings!

Thanks for any help,

Travers

 

[Kinky Cowboy]

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 16:40:15 +0200, "Travers Waker" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Hi.
>
>I've got a Deore Hollowtech crankset, just over a year old.
>In that year, I've put some serious milage onto it, but no
>other abuse.
>
>I was very unimpressed to discover that the spider is now
>loose (has play) on the crank arm. I think they're
>attached to each other with splines, but it doesn't look
>like they're designed to come apart, so I can't really
>check that.
>
>What I'd like to do is take the spider off the crank arm,
>and then put them back together again with some bonding
>agent (Loctite/Epoxy?) on the splines. Has anyone managed
>to get the spider off the crank arm of Deore cranks before
>(without writing off the crank set)? If so, how?
>
>The dealer that sold the cranks to me (as part of a
>complete bike) told me that the guy who evaluates warranty
>claims said that this was "normal wear and tear", and not
>covered by warranty. I've been thinking about this: How can
>it be normal if the orginal chain rings are still okay to
>use a new chain (they are), but the actual cranks need
>replacing? Maybe Deore cranks have bolt-on chainrings so
>you can replace the arms and spider regularly, but re-use
>the same chain rings!
>
>Thanks for any help,
>
>Travers
>

Deore cranks are so cheap it's not worth investing much
time or effort in trying to repair this one. On the other
hand, there's no way this swaged junction should start
coming apart before the rings wear out, so you should be
hassling your shop, the bike company and Shimano over
premature failure.

Kinky Cowboy*

*Batteries not included May contain traces of nuts Your
milage may vary