gregg-o

I'm getting alot of wear on my crank arms from my toe straps. I was wonder on how to clean the arms up and any tricks on preventing it in the future. Not the end of the world, but just kind of bothers me.

travsi

i'm guessing it's looking worn because of the anodization being
rubbed off by the strap. maybe if you de-anodised it and polished
it would look better …and maybe the strap (if it's leather) won't
cause so much wear to a polished surface.

Hirohsima

nothing you can do if your cranks are anodized. If you have worn through the anoidixation, the only thing left is to polish out the cranks. If they are just scuff marks, I use plastic polish since it is a very mild clearner/polish.

If you have car wax/polish, those will work well and not scrach

travsi

hi five!

BrooklynMachine

It happens. We've seen sugino 75s that were worn to literally 1/3 their original thickness. It's sort of like cables that rub deep into burly suspension fork crowns or aluminum head tubes.

3m protective film works wonders, but it will get yellowed and discolored over time. You can buy huge sheets of it at auto supply stores or online. There is a bike specific product called "BonK!" which is basically the same thing.
You can also buy sheets or squares of adhesive backed carbon fiber in several different colors.

travsi

damn, i didn't think it could get so bad...

blickblocks

In my small experience, it's been the shoes, not the straps. If you can hear a very faint "squeek...squeek", try shifting your feet outboard.

Hey BMW, do you have any pics? I'm curious as to what that looks like...

dobber

Sorry, I'm going to have to question the validity of that claim.

Wotan

Wait a second. You, Brooklyn Machine, are saying that cranks that were approximately 12mm thick are now 4mm thick.... Literally..... Because of toe straps..... Toe straps without little files or angle grinders attached to them.... Um, okay.....

the pope

Ditto. Show us Forrest Gump's bike.

crushkilldstroy

I'm gonna go ahead and jump on the "show me" bandwagon.

coelcanth

i have old cranks (campy, stronglight, etc) that are on the edge of being unuseable due to toe strap wear

it wass not uncommon to suffer breakage caused at least partially by this problem

pedals like the mks rx1's have tabs to keep the straps in control

the pope

spin, Forrest , spin

display the goods

barba

Clipless pedals may help, but bike parts are going to get scuffed. It just shows that they are being used, and is completely wholesome.

dobber

Unless Sheldon Brown says so, it ain't happening

Longfemur

Ahhh, one of the too easily forgotten disadvantages of the old toe clips and straps. I live in the past for most things, but I won't give up my clipless pedals! Nostalgia has a very poor memory, like in the thread about bringing back the English 3-speed.

fix:

yeah my toestraps wore all the way through my downtube. the crank broke off but i was late for work so i just kept pedaling

BrooklynMachine

Sorry, folks. It wasn't our bike so we didn't take pics but can provide a description: The bike was used heavily over several seasons, and eventually the spot where the shoe/strap rubbed the crank wore a gentle "V" through the arm (not across it's entire length), to 1/3 of the original thickness. I'm sure shoe size had something to do with it, as the rider was well over 6' in height.

Aluminum, in all it's alloys, is just a very soft metal relative to most steels/ti. Again, look at a moderately used mountainbike or even MX bikes and you will likely see similar wear wherever the soft plastic cable housing slides across an aluminum surface, resulting in similar gouging. It's not so much the plastic (or in this case, leather strap) that causes the wear, but more of a case of dirt and grit sandwiched between that gradually wears away the aluminum surface it rests on.
It's not a catastrophic failure waiting to happen, it's just something that has been known to happen.

dutret

sounds like bull.

Snordalisk

I have some serious toe strap wear on one set of old Shimano 600 cranks from using stupid narrow pedals with stupid wide feet for a while. The leather straps had aluminum dust embedded in them where they rubbed against the crank, and there was nothing to keep them from wearing down forever.

I could certainly see them putting deeper gouges in the crank over a long period of time if I had stopped caring about my bike, and kept using those tiny pedals.

epschoenly

Yeah but like 2/3's of the way through a crank arm?

Bushman

i have many old mountain bikes with deep U grooves in the headtubes from cable rubbing. Why is everyone so suspect about this, look at any bike with tight clusters of bundled cable housings along the headtube - all have wear, some worse than others. Same with cranks, the straps pick up road grit which is an abrasive. Millions of crank revolutions (yes, when you ride lots you have millions of crank revolutions) over the years wears a deep groove into the crank arm. It is more prevalent on smaller pedals where the platform is closer to the crank arm. Most pedals nowadays the platforms are further out by about 5mm.
as far as i'm concerned the doubting thomases and we want a picture whiny nancies can go huff deep on a tailpipe

Snordalisk

If you don't notice, and just keep riding for years, then why not?

ecp8

I have the campy pista crank. The logo is right where the toe strap has worn it down to a smear on the chainring side, but oddly enough the non-chainring side sparkles nicely still withoug any sign of wear.

epschoenly

At some point the worn crank arm would be out of reach of the strap I would imagine. Wouldn't it be very uncomfortable every time you pedal that you strap came into contact with more then half of the crank arm, like one would, I suspect, notice.