Been looking for some well priced cranks for a build project and came across some forum stuff about Jeff Jones modifying old XTR cranks to 1 or 2 x 10 etc. The cranks can be had pretty cheaply now on ebay for is still a nice quality hollow forged crank that runs on a standard HT2 BB.
Only draw back is there 102 BCD but Wolftooth do a 32 or 34 narrow wide ring
Also i think with a bit more thinking and fettling I can use standard 104BCD rings have turned up some concentric bolts that should take the BCD from 102 to 104 need to make some sleeved top hats to locate the chain ring then M6 nuts to clamp it all.
Anyway nice to have a project!

Very tidy

They don’t stay shiney for long.I retired mine as rings became difficult to source (I think I bought every blackspire one in the uk).

Nice. I did the same but lost interest after buying some Blackspire 102bcd rings that were made of cheese. Be interested to see how you get on,…

Cheers plenty of rings around

32T here but as said in post think i can make them work with standard 104 rings.

http://www.acycles.co.uk/stronglight-xtr-ct2-middle-9-speed-chainring-alu-7075-102mm-black-2632.html?utm_source=google_produit_cpc&gclid=CO_fueilvcYCFSLkwgodEVYIXQ

Would be interested to know where the concentric bolts were sourced from. I have recently put a Jonesed M960 crankset with a Wolftooth 32T ‘Dropstop’ on my bike.

I reckon that some (104BCD) chainrings could be drilled to elongate the holes by 1mm. Some do not have much leeway to lose even a slight amount of metal on the inside of the tab however. Still, probably easily doable with the right ring to start with.

Crankset, new ring and BB combined at ~600g aint too shabby for about £110.

Yup, Blackspire rings are poo. My BETD one is on the way out, and I don’t think they make em anymore. I think Middleburn still do a 102bcd one, but not a single speed one.
Might have a look at the Wolftooth ones.
They will need polishing every few months!

I have some heavy duty frame saver on mine, is totally transparent and last ages and only tarnishes in time on the non protected alloy. They look great.

What’s the best way of doing this?
Got some XTR 985’s looking tatty.
Mite try this to rennovate them!
Thanks,
Max

Theres good info here

DIY XTR 960 Single Crankset

I did it to a set of 960 cranks i found in the bin at my old LBS. The rings had worn out, so the original owner told them yo bin them whilst getting a new crankset fitted!
6 years later, and they’re still doing sterling work, currently on the Krampus 🙂

[url=https://flic.kr/p/7eMEFj]XTR SS conversion[/url] by tom harrison, on Flickr}

Small update, looking at the 102/104 BCD compatibility issue. I was thinking the concentric bolts were probably over complicated.
So instead I turned up some 1mm offset stepped dowels with a 6mm hole though them. This means that a standard 104BCD chain ring properly spigots onto the spider and is clamped by 6 mm bolts. It will only work on 1 x 10 / 9 but seems a decent work around.