My go-to cranks for touring used to be the Middleburn RS7 square taper, setup with 38-27 chainrings, but Middleburn have bitten the dust and are no longer in business. As I ride pronouncedly toes-out heels-in, I need cranks that flare out from axle to pedal, which excludes cranks such as the Sugino OX series or clones of TA Cyclotouriste, so when I saw that ChainReaction were clearing out Deore XT M785 2x10 cranks with 38-26 chainrings for $A106 (~$US80), I bought a pair. The cranks are intended for use on a 73mm BB with a 48mm chainline, and come supplied with two 2.5mm spacers for installation on a 68mm BB. As supplied, even if the spacers are omitted, to get a better chainline and narrower tread, the mating splines on the BB axle and RH crank won't allow the cranks to snug up to the bearings on both sides. I had a look at the splines on the inside of the RH crank where it mates with the axle, and decided that even if I ground off 5mm of splines, there would still be 10mm length of spline to engage - more than enough. I clamped the crankarm in a rubber-jawed vice, and a few minutes with my Dremel and a small grinding wheel did the job. As assembled now, the end of the axle protrudes about 1mm past the hole in the crank. I thought about putting the axle in my threadless stem saw guide and cutting a couple of millimetres off it, but a quick scrape with a file showed that the steel in the axle was much too hard for a hacksaw blade, so I didn't bother.
Images of the modified splines and assembled crank. <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-KbasIX_Lipk/WCVivTJg5MI/AAAAAAAAEao/Tc_48yUjdII0KKsOCOaSejMjjbZfqgamgCLcB/s1600/DSC00659.jpg> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f9V17oBljoE/WCViraRc7fI/AAAAAAAAEak/mQDTxOvlhCIsFhjA5zPZ5YB-nmwgMa-FQCLcB/s1600/DSC00656.jpg> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-KbasIX_Lipk/WCVivTJg5MI/AAAAAAAAEao/Tc_48yUjdII0KKsOCOaSejMjjbZfqgamgCLcB/s1600/DSC00659.jpg> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
