durrrell

I own a few repair books and spoke with a couple of the local mechanics at the bike co-op and all of them tell me that I have to remove the crank in order to r&r the small chainwheel. But, I looked at the chainwheels and the crank and it looks like I can remove the CW's without pulling the crank... I kept looking and looking and I was convinced that I didn't need to remove the crank in order to change the CW's. But... I'm a rookie working on bikes... What do I know... So... I bought a crank puller, I bought the chainwheel nut wrench... and so I now have all the tools just in case I'm wrong and need to pull the crank.

Well lo and behold... I didn't need that chainwheel special wrench as there was no problem loosening the CW nuts & bolts, however, the wrench was only $3 and I'm sure I'll need it on some of my other bikes. And... since I didn't need to pull the crank... I didn't need the crank puller and this turned into a VERY simple job needing only the 5mm allen wrench to do the job.

No doubt in many instances the crank might need to be removed, however, I just want to tell people, that this is not always the case and I'd probably guess that a MAJORITY of cases, the crank will not need to be removed when replacing a chainwheel on a 2 CW road bike.

My case, I have a 52t/42t and wanted to replace the 42t with a 39t and that was a piece of cake.

Bianchigirll 

I have done that many times, it is simply a matter of what model the crank is. I think on some of the newer ones, and older odd stuff like TA and Nevar, you really do need to remove it. also it is always possible some of the people you wre talking to simply assumed you were talking about the granny ring when you used the term inner ring.