Was reading a thread here about preload on Hope’s new EVO cranks and it got me thinking. I love Hope stuff and their cranks are clearly things of beauty, but watching the installation video just reminded me how spot-on Shimano got the design for Hollowtech 2.

Tools require to install and de-install Hope cranks:

• 10mm hex key and a big wrench
• 19mm socket and a big wrench
• Crankset-assembly tool (CNC-machined, Hope-specific)
• Pre-load removal tool (if you want to take it off again)
• Big-ass torque wrench. Not your normal bike one, that’s for sure! (70-75Nm is big, even by Sram’s standards!)

All this obviously needs a video explaining how the various bits are installed together and there’s plenty of scope to get it wrong.

Compare this to the tools required to install and de-install HT2 cranks:

• 5mm allen key
• TL-FC16 (cheap plastic preload thing, costs a couple of quid).

That’s it. Needs about 12-15Nm of torque so can be installed without any heavy-duty tools. The exact torque setting won’t affect the performance of the crank (within reason, of course) as the preload is all done beforehand, but the chances are you’re standard bike torque wrench will be good enough here. No video needed either – my mum could install an HT2 crankset and have a pretty good chance of getting it right.

No disrespect meant to Hope here, but Shimano really did crack the industrial crankset design with HT2 and there’s a good reason why they’re still using it on pretty much every proper groupset they sell, both road and MTB. IMHO, noone is yet to better it. Personally, I only ever think about this when working on my son’s GXP cranks which are just awful by comparison, held together by brute force. And if there’s any play in the axle, what do they suggest? Take it apart, put a bit more grease on the splines, and have another go. And don’t get me started on the big mud gap right next to the BB bearings where the wavey washer goes!

So, let’s hear your suggestions – who has done it better than the big S?

EEwings are pretty simple, though takes a bit of a heave on the Allen key.

You don’t even need the plastic tool thing, you can just tap them home with a block of wood, works just as well.

I’m a big HT2 fan, though I think the new xtr cranks moved to another system which doesn’t please me, I hope there isn’t trickle down to the rest of the range.

The only issue is the chainring, I think the SRAM spiderless design is much better.

Hope in “Good but overrated by fanbois” shocker.

I don’t know why, but HT2 (road) cranks always started creaking under me. Tried several sets, even bought a torque wrench and found out I’d been using the right torque anyway… never solved the problem. Went to GXP and they’ve basically been faultless. And you only need the one allen key, not even a top hat, and there’s only one bolt to do up. Tighten it and the crank goes on, loosen it and the crank falls off. Could not be simpler.

So, IME: no 😉

Though (despite brief dalliances with Isis and Octalink, which were both completely shit) I still haven’t progressed past square taper on MTBs because they just work so well.

Yes with square taper. But HT2 is the best of the externals. The whole massive torque of the self-extracting nut type crank is a faff.

I’m a big HT2 fan, though I think the new xtr cranks moved to another system which doesn’t please me, I hope there isn’t trickle down to the rest of the range.

News to me. My M8100 cranks (which are more or less identical to the M9100 XTR version) arrive tomorrow and I wasn’t expecting them to be any different than the M8000/M9000 ones. Oh well, I guess we’ll see when they turn up with an instruction sheet big enough to use as an emergency biking hostel, in 200 different languages, including Esperanto, Klingon and Middle-Earth Elven.

The whole massive torque of the self-extracting nut type crank is a faff.

Basically the same as square taper, no? Plus I’d say it’s less of a faff. “Wang it until it stops moving” is a piece of piss, even a gorilla could follow that. “12-15Nm” is a faff, especially when they give you bolts with heads that seem to start deforming at about 14Nm.

I don’t know why, but HT2 (road) cranks always started creaking under me.

Were these push-fit BBs of some description, by any chance? My experience is that the cranks themselves rarely creak, but pushfit BBs (and especially BB30 – the worst of the lot!) can be something of a dark-art to make silent. I’ve never had a threaded Shimano BB creak in any way.

(FWIW, Loctite 641 is the magic stuff for creaking, push-fit BBs. Wonderful stuff!)

Basically the same as square taper, no? Plus I’d say it’s less of a faff. “Wang it until it stops moving” is a piece of piss, even a gorilla could follow that

That’s the point. It takes gorilla force to get dub etc off. And when the bb’s last 2 months it’s a faff.

Were these push-fit BBs of some description, by any chance?

No, normal English threaded cups. It was a bit weird. Still, a bit academic now.

As good as the shimano system is.. I’ve always preferred the way the raceface cranks fit(direct mount version) 8mm bolt does up and then adjust the preload from the non drive side and gently tighten the Allen bolt.

I quite like GXP, no preloading of anything, no need to be carefull just tighten it up, one tool required.

Quite agree, the Shimano system works so well, easy to install and very reliable.

GXP +1, especially if we’re talking only the installation and removal, 1 bolt, no torque wrench just as tight as you can get it with a standard allen key. No adjusting, no preloading, no shims.

Only downside of GXP is no one makes a decent aftermarket BB for it. It relies on circlips on the BB bearings, hope sortof works with the plastic shields but even they wear out. The rest just fall appart as far as I’ve tried.

Having said that, ive not really had a problem with the SRAM ones, early ones were bad but not had a problem for ages.

Bullseye did it first.

-1 GXP

Sure, easy to fit but the design is poor, as it floats the axle on the DS bearing, places all loads through the NDS bearing, and you can’t preload the bearings with any real control. This is why they creak and the BBs don’t last, and why SRAM has dropped the design with DUB.

The 1st gen. Hope is clearly a mess design-wise (I have one). Maybe the EVO sorts that.

The only downside to HT2 I’ve found is that if the pinch bolts seize/round then you are into drilling them out, which never really goes well.

-1 GXP

Sure, easy to fit but the design is poor, as it floats the axle on the DS bearing, places all loads through the NDS bearing, and you can’t preload the bearings with any real control. This is why they creak and the BBs don’t last, and why SRAM has dropped the design with DUB.

-1
The plastic collar they fit on the driveside (on screw in BB’s) has no retention feature, so it slowly walks itself out, then wears as it slips, followed by the crank wobbling up and down. I’ve stuck an o-ring in there, for the BB30 there is a wavy washer. Never seen a wavy washer shipped with 24mm sram cranks…

+0.5
They are cheap though and you can replace the bearings, good replacement bearings do cost more than a new BB though!

I love the Shimano system, it’s brilliantly effective.

The GXP, i like the retention/setup, the bearing life i’ll wait and see… but at £20 for a BB, if i get 6-8 months i won’t complain.

I’ve stuck an o-ring in there, for the BB30 there is a wavy washer. Never seen a wavy washer shipped with 24mm sram cranks…

The original Campag Chorus 11 cranks, the ones with the Hirth joint, where the axle bolts together in the centre using a sort of bolted and splined interface, used a wavy washer under one crank arm to add lateral tension to the system / compensate for the non-adjustability of the axle. It doesn’t work very well. To add insult to injury, my cranks eventually fell off when the axle sheared. I replaced them with a set of Dura-Ace cranks.

The Shimano system mostly just works, though I can remember the initial bearings being expensive and prone to wear on mountain bikes. The system used on the old XTR M970 cranks on the other hand, is pretty annoying and requires a special tool for crank removal.

Ball bearings like bbs should not be side loaded / pre loaded. the shimano system does this. I have a raceface with a far superior system where ther cranks are drawn together with a single bolt down a tapered spline to a hard stop. No side loading on the bearings. No pinch bolt needed on the crank. Even ham fisted people cannot wreck it. Bearings last much longer. Standard extractor to remove – and this is with standard external bearings

Because of the side loading and pinch bolts I will not use shimano

I was a bit baffled why HOPE made it so complicated having come from Shimano previously, I did wreck an axle due to not following the instructions properly.

Overall worth it for the bling, I can’t tell the difference with the stiffness.

I prefer the XTR 970 setup – similar to the RF one. Bolt the 2 cranks together properly, then fine tune the preload with a threaded collar inside the NDS crank. Looks like the new 12S chainsets have gone back to this.The normal HT2 setup works, just feels a bit unrefined in comparison.

The difference between Shimano and RF is that RF do the bolting together bit on the driveside, which leads to a really bulky crank that I, at least, keep catching my ankle one

Ht2 for the win 🙂

and you can’t preload the bearings with any real control.

It’s not supposed to be preloaded.

I agree on the plastic spacer though, it would work better if they just made the bearing the correct size to start with.

Ball bearings like bbs should not be side loaded / pre loaded. the shimano system does this. I have a raceface with a far superior system where ther cranks are drawn together with a single bolt down a tapered spline to a hard stop. No side loading on the bearings. No pinch bolt needed on the crank. Even ham fisted people cannot wreck it. Bearings last much longer. Standard extractor to remove – and this is with standard external bearings

Because of the side loading and pinch bolts I will not use shimano

Posted 6 minutes ago

The shimano system uses ACB’s which are meant to be preloaded, it’s the same theory that they use in their hubs, because some of the load is axial you need to deal with it. That’s why they use those tiny plastic preload adjusters, it’s supposed to be just snug enough to preload the bearings. Without preload they would fail pretty quickly as the two races would be trying to slip off each other. It also allowed them to reduce the width of the BB by 2mm as the bearings could be narrower as one ‘shoulder’ of each race was redundant, meaning effectively bigger bearings, and a bigger area for the NDS crank to clamp onto.

From an engineering perspective the more you look at it the better it gets. Apart from it needed some sort of grease purge or better/replaceable seal.

GXP does it by using one much larger bearing to deal with the side loads, it’s bigger than the bearings in things like car gearboxes (which are under big radial loads, but completely isolated from axial loads)!

The genius of GXP was how easy it was to build on a production line. 1 bolt, 1 torque setting. For a production line where saving seconds on an operation is important, that must be almost a minute off the shimano version.

The race face system (depending on which you have, I’m guessing it’s the original X-type) uses a whole stack of plastic shims and a rubber X-ring to take up the tolernaces. It was great in use but that wasn’t the title of the thread, from an assembly perspective it needs installing and removing 2-3 times to get it right. Which is probably why they appeared on almost zero OEM bikes. Although I guess that could be solved by facing the shells down to exactly 68/73mm to allow a consistent number of shims.

Engineers opinion of gxp.

Always owned Shimano.
Got my first sram rival groupset in 2017, it was ok at first.
Ive had lots of constant niggles and faff with the groupset and don’t like the crank design at all.

Finally found a 96bcd 44t chainring to fit a spare slx crank and will be fitted as soon as it arrives, I will be using a grinder to remove the rival crank with great pleasure 😈

Those instructions are for the old Hope cranks. Hope Evo need a 10mm allen key and that’s it.

TJ – the Shimano approach allows a set up free from excessive side loading and without play – that’s the point of the adjuster (exactly like a headset). The early RF set ups had no adjustment and naively relied upon perfect BB shell width etc which is one of the reasons most people got poor beating life from them. They now have a preload adjustment like XTR M970/M9100.

Engineers opinion of gxp.

He really annoys me.

If you asked him for a calculator he’d tell you that sage was better than quickbooks, and swear a lot. Whilst ignoring the fact that you wanted a calculator not an accountancy package and the biggest worry you didn’t know you had was whether the input method was was Infix or Reverse Polish notation.

Ball bearings like bbs should not be side loaded / pre loaded

How do you adjust you headset?

Headsets either are cup and cone or axial bearings which can be side loaded – and you do not preload headset bearings – you set them to zero play – I didn’t realise shimano bbs were axial. So my mistake

My preferred system is octalink. BY far the best system I have used. The race face I like tho.

I’ve got HT2 and GXP.

I’ve not really had any issues with either. I’ve had to re-tighten GXP cranks after they have been installed, but you generally only have to do this once.

The only downside to HT2 I’ve found is that if the pinch bolts seize/round then you are into drilling them out, which never really goes well.

I’ve had to cut an ancient LX crank off after one of the bolts rounded out, but I can’t really blame the crank for this.

GXP allowed smaller chainrings from the get go which was handy for 1 x systems with a 29er, although this isn’t an issue with newer Shimano cranks with the smaller BCD.

If i was ordering new cranks today I’d probably go back to Shimano

GXP allowed smaller chainrings from the get go which was handy for 1 x systems with a 29er, although this isn’t an issue with newer Shimano cranks with the smaller BCD.

Did it?

There’s nothing inherent to the shimano design that would preclude omitting the spider and having a direct mount.

Small chain rings aside direct mount has the disadvantage that you can’t change the chainring without taking the crank off.

I kinda suspect direct mount is another thing that SRAM did to help OEM’s, the SRAM crank box is about 1/5th the size of the shimano ones (and is rectangular so stacks!) , and that probably matters when you’re a production engineer. A bit like shimano and centerlock.

My preferred system is octalink.

IME the bearings lasted no time at all (though longer than Isis, which was due for replacement by the time you’d got to the end of your street) and, of all the systems, it was the easiest one to accidentally knacker, usually by either forgetting to fish out the small washer that always got stuck in there, or forgetting to put it back in again.

It also gave square taper a problem by introducing a new tool that looked almost identical but would strip your threads if you accidentally used it on a square taper crank. (Which reminds me, I really must throw my Octalink tool away before I do that again.)

But other than needing constant replacement and making replacement prone to expensive errors if you weren’t paying close attention, yeah, loved it 😉

Not my experience Bez. I have octalink on the tandem that has done many thousands of miles and my standard tool works fine. ( it does have a bit yo can remove for square taper)

Didn’t like RF, the hard stop sounds like a good idea in theory, but you needed to hang off the Allen key in a way that meant if you slipped you’d mangle the bolt or your knuckles.

Don’t mind SRAM DUB, easy install, no worries with it so far, although BB has only lasted a year, so that’s a bit disappointing

Shimano seems the best of the bunch for me, easy install, long life, wide range of aftermarket BB (although have made an XT last 3 years, so not really an issue. Wish Shimano did a better range of spiderless though

All this obviously needs a video explaining how the various bits are installed together and there’s plenty of scope to get it wrong.

After you’ve translated it from Lancastrian to English.

Shimano system has never given me any trouble, but theres a gap in the market for a low range torque key for the preload and bleed ports on brakes too. Why specify 0.5nm or 1.5nm when nobody’s got a torque wrench that goes that low.
Rounding off hollowtech II bolts purely comes down to bad tools or technique, my mate rounds off bolts because he’s applying force incorrectly like a ham fisted ape. I use uberbikes ti bolts torqued to 13nm without issue by applying pressure down through the bolt head and not just wrenching on the end like an orangutan.

I don’t know why, but HT2 (road) cranks always started creaking under me. Tried several sets, even bought a torque wrench and found out I’d been using the right torque anyway… never solved the problem.

It was probably your BB.

Or your saddle.