This all started when I decided to overhaul my bottom bracket while I was in the process of converting my road bike into a fixed gear. Cavet - I do a lot of my own mechanical work on cars, just starting to get into the bike mechanics stuff.

I bought this bike used, it is a Miele road bike with a square taper bottom bracket with bearings, NOT a cartridge BB.

I popped the dust covers off the crankarms and saw that the threads that the crank arm removal tool threads into are totally roached, gone, trashed. There is no way to thread the tool into the crankarms and get it to stay. I tried, and I just ended up pulling the tool out when I cranked the inner bolt onto the axle attempting to take the crank arm off (what the hell, the threads were already pretty far gone).

I then looked more closely at the crank arms and saw that one is 170mm and the other is 172.5. Joy. Oh well.

My current thinking it to pry the crank arms off with a gear puller or ball joint puller, and if that fails, cut the sum*****es off with a wizzer tool (gotta love compressed air tools ). Current thinking goes, if I have to cut the crank arms off I will go ahead and replace the old BB with a cartridge style BB and get new crank arms (which will only run a single chainring up front)

Problem is I have no idea how to determine the proper crank arm length. I am a 5'5" shorty with a pant leg inseam of 31 or 30" depending on the manufacturer of the pant. Soooo, do I get 170mm cranks, 172.5mm, 175, etc. and how do you figure that out? I figure I won't know what cranks to get until I figure out what BB cartride I need to replace the old BB.

Sorry for the length, but I have been enjoying a couple of fine and I tend to ramble.

Thanks!

Victor