My new bike is arriving soon, and I want to protect the crankarms from the pedals. I do change them quite often and it tends to chew the aluminium arms up quite easily.

I seem to remember a specific washer you could buy to stop this happening, but I can’t find them for sale anywhere.

Can anyone help?

Them cheapo cranks on the Pitch will be ok. Just buy new ones when they are fudged.

If it’s all the same, I’d rather buy a 50p washer and make them last a few months longer.

They aren’t “cheap” to me either, buying this bike is a major financial commitment to me and I want to look after it.

protecting crank arms from the pedals? am I missing something here? how are your pedals fouling your cranks?

I’m confused- do you thread them at an angle?

Ah you mean your shoes rub on the arms?

What gets chewed up? The threads on the cranks? Or do you mean your shoes rub on the crank arms?

I think rubbing on crank arms is just something that sometimes happens adn there’s not a lot you can do about it – some crank designs are worse for this than others due to their profile.
If it’s the actual thread that is getting chewed up, then I think you just need to be more careful about aligning the pedal before tightening it up.

Apologies for my usual facetious reply.

I actually got some pedal washers with my recently purchased cranks, I’ll post em to you if you want. (Email in profile)

The only problem you’ll get really is wrecking the thread from a lot of pedal swapping. Just don’t do them up too tight and take care not to cross-thread. Pedals don’t need to be done up very tightly.

Yeah, it’s those washers I need. I quite often take my pedals off to transport the bike or to put on my road bike (I use flat pedals and they stick out a fair bit when you are putting the bike in the back of the car). I don’t do them up too tight, just nicely snug (not really an accurate guage I know) but I think more modern cranks seem to suffer from the chewing up problem more.

I want to put them on this time as I can feel, occasionally, as if the pedal axle is bent. I used to get this all the time riding street BMX and you can easily feel the problem, but am I suspecting is because the pedals are not meeting the crankarm squarely.

DezB, I’ll send you a mail, you’re a star. 🙂

BTW, I’ve never cross threaded a pedal ever. Surely it can’t be done, it’s such a large thread?

I did snap some cranks once, and did bend some Profile BMX cranks once too.