How Do I Remove Old Zeus Crankset?
 

Picked up a '72 Raleigh Competition at an estate sale. Mostly Zeus . I'm guessing I'm going to have to grind down a socket? 16mm?

Any other ideas?

How's it different than other cranks ?

I use an old Park wrench with 14, 15, 16 mm sizes for crank bolts.

High-end sockets from e.g. Snap-On, old USA-made Craftsman, etc. tend to be thinner than inexpensive sockets and will fit in the arm. 16mm "peanut-butter" wrenches from Zeus and Park were also available BITD and turn up on eBay (but the 14-15-16 Park crank wrench does not fit the Zeus arm). Otherwise, yeah, you'll need to grind down a socket to fit.

http://www.os2.dhs.org/~john/crank-wrenches.jpg

Zeus uses a 16mm bolt in a 22mm extractor hole. This leaves minimal clearance for a socket to fit in the hole. Stronglight also used a 16mm bolt, but their extractor hole was 23.35mm wide.

While the 16mm socket on the Park 14-15-16mm wrench fits into a Stronglight am, it is too thick to fit into the Zeus arm. Park did make a 16mm thin-wall peanut-butter wrench to fit Zeus cranks (the CCW-16).

16mm 12 Point sockets
 

12 point sockets usually have thinner walls than 6 point sockets. As John mentioned above older Craftsman sockets had thin walls. 3/8" drive sockets are usually thinner than 1/2" drive sockets.

There are several Craftsman 16mm 12 Point 3/8" Drive Sockets #44311 listed on eBay for ~$4.00 plus free shipping.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...66739fd4f8.jpg

verktyg :50:

Nah, whatcha really need here is...
 

...the one time, on the one bike I had to do this, it turned out to be easier (because I have a bench grinder) to just take an odd 16 mm socket and thin the wall. i still have it in the tool box somewhere, and will probably never use it again, because of course when you reassemble the thing, you want to use a crank bolt with a smaller, 15mm head. Or one of those socket headed ones that precludes the need for a dust cap.

...is there any bicycle tool of which you do not own at least one ? :lol:

I found that a surplus 5/8" socket was perfectly sized for a 16mm bolt head, so I spun it against my grinder wheel until it fit into the threaded crankarm bore.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5e47c21256.jpg

Thanks all. I found a beat out 16mm 12-pt. socket and ground it down. It did the trick to pull the bolts. A Park CCP-22 pulled off the arms. My Campy puller and and an off-brand puller wouldn't fit the Zeus threads.

Were there dust caps that went with this set or was the bolt designed with the wide top to preclude the use of a dust cap?

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The Zeus Gran Sport, Competition, Criterium & early 2000 model chainsets came without a dustcap. Their fixing bolts are chrome plated.

Some of the later model Zeus chainsets did come with dustcaps.

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The Zeus extractor thread is standard 22mm x 1mm, so the Park crank puller works fine for that part of the job. But the mounting bolts are 16mm, rather than the more typical 15 or 14mm, and need a thin-wall socket for removal. Many people simply replaced the 16mm Zeus bolts with 15 or 14mm bolts to simplify removal with more common tools.

My Zeus 2000 crank came with titanium bolts. No rust on them! :)

http://www.os2.dhs.org/~john/zeus-drillium-crank.jpg

Done. Started a new thread.

The New Racer group definitely came with dust caps.

http://eddy.ciocctoo.com/ce3.JPG

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Thanks very much for posting this set.

It is about third generation New Racer.

The original (or prototype) set is illustrated in this advert from 1981 -

http://i63.tinypic.com/2holnk2.jpg

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Here's the whole group I have....NOS from an eBay seller in Germany a few years ago.

http://misc.ciocctoo.com/nrg.JPG

Oh yes, it definitely has the titanium bottom bracket. :thumb: