Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I heard of someone losing the crank arm bolt back in the 80s, and then suddenly his crank arm fell off and was hanging from his foot from the toe clip. That was before clipless pedals existed and I only heard of that happening once. Have you heard of this happen to someone in the past couple decades?
Well if his crank arm fell off, he was riding it while loose and wobbly for a while, I’d think. But in any case, I haven’t heard of that in particular, but I had a bolt losen and the crank just slightly losen. By the time I got home less than 5 miles, the crank was ruined. I’ve heard of this happening to others. The problem is due to the design of the square taper. it naturally rounds out the square hole very quickly if it comes even just a little loose. Then the arm with the less than perfect hole will be creaky and come loose from then on even if you try to really tighten the bolt. I like the design of the new cranks where the arm is solidly bolted to the spindle. And the bearkngs have become better and are less likely to fail quickly, from what I’ve read.