Andel crank failure

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Juan Kog

permanently grumpy
Has anyone else had a crank develop a severe crack on the Andel fluted retro style chainset. Two weeks ago my Sunday morning ride into the wilds of north Hertfordshire on my Surly steamroller was going really well apart from the head wind and the unidentifiable ticking noise. A mile into my return journey wind behind me . CRACK not good 20 miles from home and the left crank had large crack in it. Anyway managed to nurse it along for 7 miles until crank was hitting chain stay , then broke it off. Leaving with me a 13 mile mixture of one leg cycling and pushing. I have now fitted Stronglight 2000 chainset , so please no tails of woe involving the strong light chainset
 

silva

Über Member
Location
Belgium
I did have a Stronglight Track 2000 chainset but you don't want tails of woe so I put the period of the sentence here. :smile:
 
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Juan Kog

Juan Kog

permanently grumpy
OK silva thanks for your consideration .I can cope .so far my only problem was with a stronglight 1000 chainset I was in a hurry and used the self extractor bolt ,it did not end well. I still use the chainset ,but it requires a bearing puller to remove.
 

silva

Über Member
Location
Belgium
One benefit of the Stronglight Track 2000 was that the chainring bolts were special, no tool needed on the frame side, made it easier to replace/rotate. So far I never found information about this method / the bolts.
Some pics attached.
It's an idea to check cranks for developing / hairline cracks, especially around the pedal eyes. Keep the pedals tight, so that they don't move and fret out the alu, especially on a fixie. I started to do that. Just a now and then. Better to discover early at home than late far away from.
 

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colly

Re member eR
Location
Leeds
When l first took up cycling in the 90's l had an old Carleton. It had seen a good bit of use before l aquired it but everything worked fine even if everything was a bit scuffed and so on
I noticed a creaking that had developed and l thought l was maybe the frame or bottom bracket. Even checked and tightened the clamp on the bars etc.
The creak was always as l leaned the frame over to the right as l stood on the pedals pushing down with my left leg.
The crank snapped mid length as l neared the top of a short steep incline.
I never even thought to check the crankarm for cracks.
Fortunately l didn't come off but did career about the road a bit. Luckily no traffic about.
I'm kind of paranoid about creaks now.
 

rogerzilla

Legendary Member
I have three sets of these on different bikes. No issues so far but they are made to fairly loose tolerances. Some slide a lot further up a JIS spindle than others. How far up did yours go?
 
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Juan Kog

Juan Kog

permanently grumpy
Thanks for the replys.colly ,I've had a crank snap in the past not as lucky as you it resulted in bruising and a very sore head ,pre helmet days for me. I was cycling home from work on my old winter/ commuting fixed nearly home out of the saddle up short climb and BANG ,only good thing I was shift worker 10 pm and roads quite. At the time I fully subscribed to old club riders view fixed wheel bikes were built from old frame and nearly worn out components. In my case Raleigh merlin frame found on a fly tip and the chainset was an old SR one the type found on early 80's low end 10 speeds.maintenance was limited to pumping up the tyres and occasionally oiling the chain. I am a lot better now may be it was the crack on the head
Rogerzilla .only andel chainset I have used, all I can say I fitted mine using a 107 mm stronglight bottom bracket and it gave me the 42 mm chain line I wanted. I then installed the stronglight 2000 chainset on same bottom bracket and 42 mm chainline . So from what your saying I must have been lucky and got a good one. I won't be using another one , although to be fair lots of cyclists have crank disaster stories, I've heard of tales involving campag stronglight and shimano .As colly said it's down to regular checking.
 
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