Hi I thought I would post this for your amusement. 🙂
I entered into bomb hole fine, came out the other side like this…

A classic case of over maintaining my bike! 🙄 both pinch bolts were loose. There was some damage to the inside of the crank arm but the spindle looked untouched.

I have now refitted it correctly but what are peoples thoughts on whether it will stay on?

Does that crank need a pre-load cap?

If you haven’t fitted that they may come off again….

I took the pic before I started hitting it with my rubber hammer. The pre-load cap is now fitted, and both bolts done up bar steward tight 🙂

it should stay on but id imagine youl get some creaking if the splines were damaged.

Thanks for the vote of confidence parkesie. Thinking back to square taper BBs i know once the crank arm was damaged nothing could keep them tight.

At 16 stone most stuff creaks on my bike 😉 a quick blast last night seemed creak free, so fingers crossed.

I’d guess it’s buggered, I managed to knacker a crank by just riding it whilst not quite tight enough, nothing as bad as the above. Crank kept loosening after that no matter how tight I did up the pinch bolts*.

if axle splines look OK buy a new non driveside crank.

Does that crank need a pre-load cap?

If you haven’t fitted that they may come off again…. preload caps don’t keep your cranks on.

*actually I’m not 100% about this, I didn’t tighten them up to silly almost thread stripping torque, that may work for light use but I’d still worry about the above happening again at an inconvenient moment.

I had my last chainset do that whilst riding it but lost the preload cap and ended up riding one legged back to the car. One new preload cap later and all was fine with it and I used it for a couple of years after that until the axel got damaged by sized bearings.

I’m sure one of the online bike shops had a LHS XT crank for sale recently. Maybe Merlin?

Without seeing the splines it’s hard to say, but I wouldn’t use it again.

edit – My mistake:

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=67789

my frie nd had similar thing happen.

but the crank slipped off and mashed the grooves on the inside of the crank.

we took a small 3-sided file and smoothed off the rough bits and cleaned out the grooves. still going well years after.

Sounds 50 – 50 then! It will fall off or it won’t 😉

Thanks for the link fourbanger. That XTR crank look shiny.
Here is the only pic i have of the inside

Image0251 by Pezza1975, on Flickr

That dosnt look to badly damaged put it back together torque everything up properly and have a bounce around on it