Originally Posted by
Fox Farm
Depending on how old your bike is or how much sweat and other grime may have gotten onto the crank, you might have a problem loosening on or more of the allen screws that fasten the chain rights to the crank arms. I was swapping some chair rings for my sister on her Serotta and one of them snapped when I tried to loosen it. Not a big deal and easy to fix but it surprised me at the time.
And here's how the day went: So after about an hour the old parts came off and the new ones were on. I was pretty happy with it. Then I realised I had to adjust the front derailleur clearance.
Being slightly OCD I wanted the gap to be exactly 2mm (the Shimano manual says 1-3mm), and lined up the chain guide to exactly parallel to the chainrings. It wasn't aligning properly until I found out the protector plate at the back where the support bolt is supposed to be pressing against is not where it should be. So that made a dent on the down tube. shattered, but still unfazed by this. I proceeded to finish off the front derailleur - I had to redo the high/low adjustment. Well, that took quite a while but I figured out the sweet spot and concluded that the manual was utter rubbish. Fortunately this was Di2 I was fiddling with, so there was no derailleur cable that could've made this harder.
So I thought this was done. Not quite - the chainring bolts still needed to be tightened. On the Specialized installation guide it recommended a torque of 9.8Nm. No freaking way should it be this tight. I used a torque wrench and got to about half way, then I stripped the torx thread of the chainring bolt. I did another bolt and stripped another one (genius). Tried to take them off but only made it worse. So I put the remaining three bolts on to fingertight and only did I realise it was about this tight when I took them off.
I'd like to know -
Fox Farm how did you remove the stuck bolts? I looked up online and I came to the conclusion of: 1. use a larger torx screw and see if I can still take it off and 2. drill the bolts off. I called the LBS and they said they could take a look next week sometimes... I'm thinking of doing the drilling myself if I can find out more info about this.
So the whole episode took the most of my afternoon. The two stripped bolts are on the chainrings and I couldn't give a damn for now (it's not gonna fall off), cleaned the bike, lubed it and took it out for a test ride, and the rings were superb (Sram Red). anyway... big ride tomorrow
