Originally Posted by
Point
Well, a 7 year old crankset now has the value of a case of crushed PBR cans. The press fit steel spindle and aluminum spider interface started giving way, and now I can't trust it anymore for fear of total failure on the road. I'm peeved, since compared to all other cranks and bottom brackets I have (all square taper), none have ever let me down, and are still going strong. Who came up with this design "improvement"? Sure the BB can be installed quicker by some machine or unskilled person, but aside from that, where's any advantage?
So much for complaining - any opinions on keeping the triple or going compact double for the replacement?
Like there were never any problems with Square taper cranks. Aluminum crank arms will fail over time where the arm attaches to the steel spindle, with the hole in the crank arm enlarging, particularly if the crank is ridden with the fixing bolt just a bit loose.
Old square taper internal BB's had an advantage with friction, over modern external sealed bearing bb's, but I don't think many people would maintain that square taper is a superior interface for attaching a crank arm to a bb spindle.