sjanzeir

Hello Wrenchers,

I've been eyeballing these wheels out of China (yeah, yeah, I can almost hear you yelling through your screens that I should know better and all, but there you go) for my Dahon Hemingway for a while now. They say that they use an 11-speed freehub body, so I figured it would be worthwhile to upgrade to 11-speed while I'm at it, so I started to slowly build up the parts that I'm going to be needing for the upgrade.

Though I'm still a long way from placing an order on a $600 pair of wheels, but I have already secured a 52t Wolf Tooth chainring and a Sunrace 11-speed 11-40 cassette. I still have to make a decision on what chain to get, but what I am at a real crossroads about is whether I ought to just get me a reasonably priced square taper crankset and call it good, or go full tilt with a Hollowtech/GXP/DUB-style affair. I'm really not too inclined to disassemble the factory drive-side crank arm and stick the Wolf Tooth in place of the original nine-speed; I've had bad luck with chainring bolts before, so I'd rather avoid a repeat of that experience and keep the original safely stowed away.

What do you think?

Andrew R Stewart 

How many rings are you dealing with? I assume a 1x...

What problems have you had with ring bolts? Is the Wolf Tooth ring compatible w/ a chain ringed mount or a splined one? The description isn't specific but sort of suggests you have a splined mount to the base of the RH arm. If so why the comment about ring bolts, or by ring bolts do you mean the lock ring a splined mount uses?

All I can say, in my opinion, is that tapered square cranks offer far more ability to space chain line to a specific frame/rear set up and are able to find more chain ring options than modern designs have. The marketing claims of crank/BB stiffness hold no importance in my life and crank weight is about the last place I would seek out those few grams of weight reduction. Andy

sjanzeir

Yup, just 1x.

I'd managed to mangle a few in the past due to overtightening and poor use of a chainring nut wrench. The results were a bike that had to be grounded for weeks while replacement bolts made their way to Saudi Arabia and a damaged ego.


It's this.

Well, I am a fan of the square taper bottom bracket myself; It's not without its problems - the need to tighten the crank arms every once in a while and having to use a special tool to take them off the spindle come to mind - but I do believe that it's a sound concept that has stood the test of time.

With that being said that reason I'm even considering upgrading to a Hollowtech/GXP/DUB style assembly has little to do with weight and everything to do with futureproofing the bike. Granted, for a non-competitive rider like me, the upgrade would offer a miniscule advantage at best and is a foolish one at worst, but I'm here looking to be talked either into or out of it. Your answer is 0 for - 1 against.

Numerozero

I'm not sure why tapered square crank arm need to be tightened once in a while? I run a shop, and have never had to re-tighten a customer's cranks that I installed.

For my Xootr I installed a Chinese "Aceoffix" (?) square taper titanium bottom bracket - has been fine for 3 years. IIRC it was 157 grams.

sjanzeir

You're the shop manager; I was hoping you'd tell me! Maybe your once in a while is different from my once in a while. Mine is every few months or so. It's pure physics - the ramping effect of the taper between spindle and crank arm will cause the latter to push back on the retaining bolt/nut, eventually working itself loose to the point where the fastener will merely be finger-tight, requiring an occasional retorquing. I've experienced this with every square taper-equipped bike that I've ridden with any kind of frequency.

Mr. 66

You should not have bolt or nuts working loose, that means they were not properly installed. If they work loose the tapers get mangled and one ends up having to re-tighten more and more to the point of being trash. At most I install ride few miles and then re-torque, never an issue.

Andrew R Stewart 

This is my retail shop experience too. Every shop that I have worked in (or my friends did too) will torque down the crank arm retaining bolts/nuts during the assembly and expect to retorque them during the free after sale follow up check over. I do find that some riders seem to have more problems with arm loosening than others do. I attribute this to their tiding style and their lack of that follow up check. There are good reasons why the crank makers have spent so much $ trying to redesign the crank arm/BB axle interface and weight reduction wasn't a part of this early on.

I will say that I prefer tapered square cranks, with good assembly and common maintenance the arm loosening issues are not a problem. When i check arm retaining bolts many times I don't actually see any further tightening, some times I get a few degrees of added wrench turn and every so often I need to do a lot of bolt/nut tightening. This has been the case since the 1970s when I first entered the LBS world and after the many thousands of bikes I have worked on what I still find true. A crank arm that continues to loosen after this is usually because the after sale check was not done and the arm's tapered hole has become deformed, once the hole is the slightest bit deformed the game is pretty much over. And it only takes a ride or two to with a not tight enough arm for the damage to happen. I sometimes use our thirst as an analogy, once you feel thirsty your are already dehydrated and behind the curve. Once you feel a loose arm that arm will likely never stay put again. Andy