So i off-squared my crank arms, right?
i’m in my local bike shop and i ask the guy if he has any cranks that could replace mine. he looks at my uni for a couple seconds before telling me “there are two left side cranks on your unicycle and one of them has been rethreaded for a right side pedal.”
is this standard on unicycles? if so, why? if no, could this be why my cranks broke?
I doubt it was two left cranks, unless they were both left threads. Maybe he was mistaken, and he thought that because the right crank had no sprocket thingy, that it was a left crank originally. It is standard for unicycles to have left and right cranks, just like bikes except without the sprocket for a chain.
I’ve bent a right crank before, and the bike shop (I didn’t know of any other place to buy parts) sold me a second left crank. I rode around with two left cranks and two left pedals. Strangely I never had any problem with the right left crank’s pedal coming undone because I did it up nice and tight. Eventually I snapped both sides of the cheap taiwanese hub.
You can order unicycle cranks from specialist unicycling shops such as Unicycle.com. They can also sell you a better unicycle with splined cranks and hub, which will not bend as easily as the crappy soft square taper ones.
that’s pretty much what i’m planning on doing… i’m thinking about getting the profile hub, but wouldnt i have to rebuild the wheel? if that is the case, should i get a new wheelset and sell my old one? this decision has been nagging me ever since my cranks came loose.
I reckon if you are going to go with Profiles, you may as well go the whole hog and get a complete setup. The choice is up to you, depending on how much money you have and how serious you are about the strength of your unicycle. A KH24" Taiwan version is relatively cheap and does the job pretty well. I’ve heard people complaining that Yuni frames do not give a lot of extra clearance for 24x3" tires, but having never tried one myself I am speaking from inexperience. I got sick of breaking parts when I rode a Cycle design unicycle, and I kept saving up and got the second most expensive unicycle on Unicycle.com, the Wilder Lightrider. I had trouble deciding between the Wilder and the DM Vortex (the most expensive), but in the end it was the weight and the looks which helped me decide. I have not regretted my purchase yet. Profile makes really nice cranks and hubs and they seem way better than square taper ones.
Have you had any luck selling your suzue hub with DX32? It would probably still be good with a new set of cranks, just for less strenuous activities than what you were doing when you ruined the last cranks. You can never have too many unicycles, except for broken ones.
I guess the shipping cost to Hawaii will influence your decision. I know I paid a fortune to ship a MUni from America to New Zealand. Little did I know that Unicycle.co.nz would come into existence soon afterwards!