Me and a friend likely both had a pair of cranksets through where the Axle had been manufactured too long. They wouldn’t tighten up properly after several rebuilds to check if they were built properly and it certainly wasn’t the BB shell on either of our bikes.

Has anyone else bought a pair and had a similar problem?

yes about four years ago shimano cranks every time for me.

I bought a set of Racefaces because I needed a 24/36 bash 10 speed setup for my Nukeproof Mega. My LBS is offering to send them directly back to Silverfish for a warranty however I purchased them from CRC, should I just send them back to CRC for a refund. Possibly order a 9 speed SLX setup and the Raceface chainrings. (Don’t trust them with a second pair of cranks)?

No need to change the rings.

If that’s the case? Damnit lol, I should have just bought the 9 speed M665 in the first place.

Don’t you get a load of nylon shims(washers) with Raceface cranks, to adjust the crank length?

Kind of at a loss why anyone buys any cranks that don’t have Shimano written on the box tbh.

yes RF come with some orange and some black elastomer rings to fine tune the axle length (the cranks need to bottom out against the end of the splines unlike shimano). My 5yr old Evolve XCs have never given me a seconds trouble (unlike their POS BB’s…).

How much too long? There was a white spacer in the box with a RF chainset I recently bought, couldn’t work out what it was for and there was no mention of it in the instructions. I wonder if this extra spacer is the remedy your problem?
Nonk and Northwind – I’ve some old Deus crankarms that I’ve had for 3 or 4 years, they’ve been on multiple bikes, had a few sets of new chainrings on them, I put 10sp rings on them for a new bike and now they’re back to 9sp on my bikepacking bike. You can take them off with only a 8mm allen key, change the chainline and buy a full set of rings for less than a £100. Definitely one of the best bike purchases I’ve ever made, excellent!
+1 on their BB’s being made out of cheese though!

Did you read the instructions?

All of the Raceface cranks I have ever had have been too long by design they should come supplied with one or two spacers to take up the gap to account for frames, bottom brackets and Bottom bracket spacers all having slightly different dimensions

Sounds to me like you and your friend didn’t assemble the spacers (that, granted, may not have been supplied in error or were buried out of sight in the packaging) and that there’s nothing wrong with the cranks.

Have a google around for other people with the same problem, it seems either you’re the only two people to have the problem and post about it, or it’s user error?

What /\ he said…..

No, the cranks were assembled with the correct amount of spacers. One spacer for a 73mm BB. If I had a 68mm BB I would have to use 2 spacers. Silverfish decided that there was something wrong if I had to use 2 spacers for a 73mm BB. As I said, I went through the build with Silverfish over the phone, then had my LBS go through it with Silverfish on the phone. Just to make sure I wasn’t being a nonce.

Oh, I thought this must have been a joke. Didn’t RaceFace go t!ts up, or was that another crazy dream? Did someone bail them out or some asian manufacturer buy the name?

Management buy-out. Like a phoenix from the ashes…

http://raceface.com/instructions/CRANKS/DeusXC’04-’07_XTYPE-Crankset.pdf
installation instructions..

Look in the last box of the “troubleshooting” table for what to do to fix them

Hmmm, I couldn’t see that in my own instructions. Neither could my LBS and that potentially means Silverfish are talking out of their arses as well.

robdeanhove – Member

All of the Raceface cranks I have ever had have been too long by design

All the Shimano cranks I’ve ever had have been the correct length by design 😉

You mean 3 for a 68, plus the little orange washer..

Yeah that’s it, late at night but I’m not using a 68mm BB

They’re the instructions for the ’11 deus crankset.. But the turbines *should* be the same system.
AFAIK, all x-type cranks are adjusted for play with those little spacers, and getting the spacer bit wrong is half the reason why the bb’s don’t last..

bwaarp: No, not the 2.5mm spacers that fit between the BB and the frame, there are additional spacers that go on the axle between the crank arm and the bottom bracket to take up the gap. As you don’t seem to be aware of these, I’m sticking by my original diagnosis of user error 😉

Shimano deal with this by having that plastic nut that you loosely do up to slide the crank arm down the spline before securing it in place, XTR have a wind out washer thing to do the same, Race Face use Elastomer spacers.

Northwind: All the Shimano cranks I’ve ever had have been the correct length by design No, they, like RaceFace have been “too long” and you adjusted them to the correct length by winding in that black plastic bolt to push the crank arm up to the BB.

Of course, as this is how they were designed, to accomodate the widest, unfaced and pained frame with the widest BB, all cranks are “too long” by design, i.e. the right length! This goes for Shimano, RaceFace and all the others

What Rob says – and the race face ones I have don’t have the fine splines and pinch bolt set up of a shimano – they have a much more robust deeper spline that you bottom out the arm on – a much superior design.

Can’t say the same for the crappy BB tho

Could bwaarp be tweerp after all???

I’ll have a talk to my LBS see if they tried those spacers. Thanks for the help anyway guys, especially Bikewhisperer and robdeanhove. Whatever Arsehide_Twinkie.

nope all 3 1mm spacers were added and there was still 2mm of play. Silverfish decided this wasn’t normal. SLX cranks ordered, RC’s going back to CRC.

nope all 3 1mm spacers were added and there was still 2mm of play. Silverfish decided this wasn’t normal. SLX cranks ordered, RC’s going back to CRC.

I think I run 4 on my deus cranks (they’re £1 on CRC)

Things to check:
Have you installed the elastometer?

Is your BB within the spec? I had a frame that claimed to be 73mm, but if you measured it with some vernier callipers it was about 70.6mm, that took an extra 2.5mm spacer to cure.

The only better system IMO is the Truvative GXP which applies no preload to the bearings. FSA use a similar setup to RF and XTR, but uses a wavey washer. My Deus cranks have been on the same shimano deore BB now for 18months, the only problems been the self extracting nut (the one the bolt pushes against to remove the cranks) self extracted mid ride!

Dammit, bet (as I don’t have any of those spacers) that’s why my 2nd hand set are a bit close on the drive side on my cotic!

Yup the elastomer was installed. My LBS was on the phone to Silverfish for about an hour going through all the possible solutions. The BB shell was well within tolerance.

“Just to make sure I wasn’t being a nonce.”

you mean numpty, nonce is a different type of fiddling.

I’m not sure why it took Silverfish an hour to say “we’ll send you a couple of axle spacers in the post”.

Hate the Raceface system with there cranks. Both Raceface cranks I had Evolve and Deus nothing but trouble. Had loads of different Shimano ones on my many bikes, Deore, LX, XT SLX all H2 design and never had a problem from any. Much better cranks than Raceface and a lot stiffer. My RF cranks flexed twice as much as any Shimano One I have used.

I am a Mong
I am a Mong
I am a Mong

But I’m not – but you sound like a ****.

Mmmm windows….

Anyway, I’ve been to the small factory in New Westminster, BC where these cranks are made and can’t really see how there would be a manufacturing issue. Maybe the axle wasn’t quite pushed on to the crank enough? As for any other reason, sticking an axle spacer or two on the non-drive side will solve all problems. You ARE tightening the axle bolt enough aren’t you? Certainly on the Atlas cranks, you have to crank down on the allen key ‘bastard tight’.

Ummm no, they decided they wanted it returned to them for inspection. Some of you are a right bunch of trolls lol?!

Do you lick windows as well as eat walls?

Repeat after me.

I am a Mong
I am a Mong
I am a Mong

No, but thanks for admiting it.

And they’ve not said there’s anything wrong with it, my moneys still on them returning it with nothing wrong, either that or you’ll get a new set of cranks out of it, and either find your mistake in the fitting process, or find they have exactly the same ‘problem’.

P.I.C.N.I.C

Problem
In
Chair
Not
In
Cranks

Always found Aphex Twin to be a tad disturbing. As that pic above illustrates perfectly.

Mind you, I think it’s good to be a bit disturbed sometimes; pushes the imagination that little bit more…

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Az_7U0-cK0[/video]

The flowers that bloom in the warmth of the sun
Are there to be loved by everyone.

This is a great thread. 😀

Who’s knicked the Window Licker?????????