So I was out practicing 180 unispins and I noticed that one of the plastic caps on the cranks by where to hub connects to the crank on the outside of the crank has come off. I looked around on the ground for it and I couldn’t find it so I am wondering if this thing is important.
Not so much
You likely don’t have a crank puller. If you wanted to worry you could pull and grease the cranks. I wouldn’t bother. Maybe take the crank bolts out and grease them, put a dab of grease on the cranks and snug it up. Grease does more to weather proof cranks than those little caps. I always grease cranks before putting them on. I would wait until you needed to remove them, unless you wanted to prepare for hard use outside.
They’re mostly cosmetic. They hide the screws that are holding the cranks. I guess they do prevent dust to get in there, but that’s about it. I’ve ridden my LX without those plastic bits for the past year, as they also broke in the first few weeks.
If you want, you could put some black tape to cover the hole.
ok thats what I was thinking but was just making sure thanks guy
It would be silly to take off the crank arms unecessarily. This is a very small and incredibly common unicycle issue (not an LX problem at all). The dust caps are almost always the first part to be lost or crack. They are a $1 part if you are very worried about it.
The only time the loss of a dust cap caused a serious problem for us was when a unicyclist was doing grinds so much, that when he stripped the cranks it was nearly impossible to use a crank puller because he damaged the internal crank threads so badly.
Just keep it clean and greased.
The unicycle mechanics at http://www.seriousjuggling.com