I’ve just bought a sram red crank (gxp)

the non drive side will not screw very far into the spindle before the pressure needed to turn the allen key any further becomes very stiff.

I’m wary to put too much pressure through it. (I plan to use a torque wrench once it almost there.

I’ve greased everything and tried lots of times now.

I heard the sram cranks have a small gap between the driveside and the BB face …. but this is a gap of over 10mm and the spindle still slides side to side.

what am I doing wrong?

10mm is way too much so the problem must be the at the nondriveside end. Have you checked there isn’t anything anything wedged inside the NDS crank arm that’s stopping it sliding fully on to the crank axle?

GXP works by fully tightening the NDS arm onto the axle, thereby sandwiching the NDS bearing and leaving the DS to simply ‘float’ inside the DS bearing. There should be ANY side to side movement at all, as the NDS crank arm locks everything in place.

You could also check the threads on the NDS crank arm and axle end. Whatever the problem is, the crank arm isn’t going on far enough.

I might still have a FSA BB in (not the sram GXP)

sefton – Member
I might still have a FSA BB in (not the sram GXP)
POSTED 31 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

That’d explain things.

doh

I presume shimano and fsa are the same.

pretty much

Compared to Shimano/FSA, Raceface, Hope et al BBs the NDS bearing on the GXP BB is a smaller diameter (22 vs 24mm) and wider. So you definitely need a NDS GXP bearing. The DS bearing on a GXP is basically the same as the DS bearing on Shimano et al.

On Hope and Chris King BBs you can get adapter shims to allow it to run with a GXP crank.

done….BIG UP TO D.J. CYCLES near Ramsbottom!