The following happened a couple of months ago but thought id post here to let others know of the issue.

Whilst out on a ride the left hand crank arm fell off. We got it back on but then it started to work itself lose again. Upon closer inspection the big black plastic bolt (not sure on name) wasnt actually screwing into anything in the crank, it didnt reach!

Cube have screwed up the design of the swing arm pivot on the bike and then bodged the crank/pedal arms to compensate.

Basically the swingarm is too wide at the pivot point (just behind the crank arm) and have had to put in an extra spacer beneath the left hand crank arm to make sure it clears the arm. The problem is this extra spacer is designed by Shimano to work with narrower bottom brackets.

Cube are aware of this issue and when the shop spoke to them they acknowledged it start away. Whilst this was good news it kinda worried me that theyve done nothing to recall bikes…

Thankfully the fix is easy and they replaced the whole crankset and pedals arms with a XT set which works with the single spacer and clears the swingarm.

Overall i love the bike and would recommend it to anyone (once theyve fixed this issue).

Steve

I have not had this issue, but mine is the ‘Team’ version with an XT chainset. I have just replaced the bottom bracket as the original bearings finally had it after 18 months of mainly wet riding and there were no spacers in it. It was just a standard Shimano SM-BB91 (for 89.5/92 x 41 mm crankset cases so the spec says). Looking at the spec of the Pro it comes with a Shimano FC-M552 2-Piece 42x32x24T, 175mm chainset. I guess it has different arm offsets or just thicker arms than the XT and I imagine that while developing the bike the test team probably just bolted on whatever came to hand which would probably be higher end kit and overlooked that the dimensions of the lower kit may be different. It’s interesting that the 2012 year lower model AMS130 bikes have a different frame (or at least suspension arms) that are only std QR instead of the 2011 142 x 12 Syntace maxle. I always wondered why the retrograde step, I guess it was to negotiate around this issue and make the lower models more profitable.

Has this fault bee rectified for the 2012 models?

I had the same problem earlier this year, the expalnation I got was the frame was deisgned with xt cranks but when they put the slx cranks on the lower spec models they noticed the left crank arm caught the pivot point, hence the spacer (poor customer service if you ask me, surely it wouldn’t have hit them that much in the pocket to put xt cranks on instead at trade bulk buying prices). Became aware of the issue when LBS put a new BB in for me after only 3 months and only using the bike once a week, the spacer and therefore less engagement of left crank was given as reason for early BB failure. Anyway after getting in touch with cube got a xt crank replacement which solved the issue, but left a taint on my opinion of them. Whilst on the topic I later cracked the frame and had issues with most parts of the bike, I don’t think this bike is suitable for all mountain riding as the name suggests and is more suited to trail centres