Not sure what's going on here - all the pictures I can find of Cyclone cranksets (including the ones Sloar currently has for sale) show a normal square taper hole for the spindle. The one I am trying to remove looks like this, with no room for the crank remover to press against the spindle:


What the heck is this? The spindle looks like a normal square taper from the back.

I tried screwing the bolt in loosely and then installing the crank remover on top of it to press against the bolt. The crank remover fits over the bolt, but the bolt seems to screw in with the crank remover to a point where pressing against it does not loosen the crank.

Knowledge or crazy speculations would be appreciated.

Looks like a washer.

It kinda does, but if so it's an aluminum one that has been squashed in so tight I can't get it out.

See if you can use a very thin screwdriver or pick to try and catch the inner lip of the washer. Can probably lever it out. Hollow spindle is likely steel so won’t really damage anything there.

The washer might also be the full diameter of the extractor threads, and jammed against the threads. Very strange, if so.

OK, it was an aluminum washer that had been tightened down so hard that it deformed into a sort of a cone with a fairly deep impression of the hex bolt head on the outer side. It also seems to have spread outward to jam itself into the extractor threads so it appeared to be part of the crank. I managed to pry it out, and I don't think I damaged the threads (much).

One of the items I keep in my traveling tool bag is a M8x1 stud created by cutting the head off an old crank bolt and filing flats on each side of one end. In the past, I've had problems with past extractions which involve a "female" threaded spindle, as the extractor can inadvertently smoosh the threads at the tip of the spindle, rendering it unusable. I thread in the stud about 10 turns/mm or more and then have the extractor bear on the stud instead of the spindle, which should eliminate the thread damage problem. It might have helped here in that the extractor wouldn't care about the washer as it would be pushing against the stud instead - unless the washer was preventing full seating of the extractor body, which can be a different serious problem.

Once a crank was so stuck that it destroyed the stud (and spindle) just before the crank arm hole threading let go, even after penetrant. But that was an exception that probably would have resisted all reasonable attempts.