In my quest for decent off-road cranks, I have come up with an idea. Is it
possible for me to somehow saw and/or grind off the attached spider on
otherwise decent cranks? I have found many high quality, marked down
cranks on the net but many have spiders. If anyone has tried this please
let me know!
Jeff
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Jeff wrote:
>In my quest for decent off-road cranks, I have come up with an idea. Is
>it possible for me to somehow saw and/or grind off the attached spider on
>otherwise decent cranks?
Yes! I’ve done it three times:
The first pair is an old alloy 170mm road bike set that had the spider
swaged on. I clamped the spider in a vise and yanked it around until the
spider broke and separated from the crank. However, This left an external
spline (where the spider used to be) that rubbed on the bearing holders on
my SEM. I ground (or filed or sanded - can’t remember) the splines off
which in effect reduced the diameter of the splined hub allowing it to
extend into the bearing holder a little bit. The non spider side crank
works with no modifications.
The second pair are 177.5mm Suntour mountain bike cranks with the spider
arms and crank cast as a single unit. I sawed the arms off in a vertical
band saw then used a bench type belt sander to smooth and round things up.
The back of both crank arms rubbed on the bearing holders when installed
though. I set them up in a mill and machined a step in the back side
concentric with the square taper hole. The diameter and depth of the step
allows it to extend slightly inside the bearing holders and not rub. I
could have just faced off the back side of the crank to get the required
clearance with the bearing holder but that would have narrowed the contact
area of the square taper … probably not a good idea. BTW - I’ve decided
that 177.5mm cranks are too long so I don’t use them now.
The third set are 170mm Shimano mountain bike cranks I modified about a
month ago for my new home brew muni. Like the Suntour cranks, the spider
arms are part of the crank so I sawed and sanded them the same way. I
didn’t have to machine the back sides since the bearing holders are
different on the new machine. If I were to use them on the SEM I’d have to
machine a step in them to clear the bearing holders though. I think these
cranks are of very good quality.
I suppose the conclusion is that cutting off the spider arms is pretty
easy but it gets more involved if there are clearance problems. It all
depends on the style of bearing holders you have.
Steve Howard
You can saw off and then grind down a spider on a good quality mountain
bike crank. It just requires that you have access to the tools necessary
to do the work, or be willing to pay someone else to do it for you.
Another option is to use tandem cranks. The right crank on the captains
set (the front rider) does not have a spider. Get the right captains crank
and a matching left crank from a standard set. There are some high quality
tandem cranks available from Shimano, Race Face, Sugino and others. When I
was riding my Pashly I had a midrange set of Sugino tandem cranks. They
worked well for me back then.
john_childs
>From: jeff d tuttle <moosebreath1@juno.com>
>
>In my quest for decent off-road cranks, I have come up with an idea. Is
>it possible for me to somehow saw and/or grind off the attached spider on
>otherwise decent cranks? I have found many high quality, marked down
>cranks on the net but many have spiders. If anyone has tried this please
>let me know!
>
>Jeff
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