Bottom Bracket Selection Guide
Cranks Can Creak Too: Cannondale Si Crank System Overhaul
The Cannondale Si modular crank system has been around a long time now, starting on the high end with the machined-out Hollowgram, and then going right down the line to the standard Si-branded, beam-arm cranks. The modularity of the Si crankset was a revelation and has set the standard for all cranks to follow such as the Easton EC90, RaceFace Next, Hope Evo, and most others. If it features a removable, splined spider, it's an echo of the Si. The Si's modularity does cause some creaking problems, unfortunately, as the many components offer many places for interfaces to flex and move as they loosen up over time. This is why Si cranks, and modular crank in general, often develop creaks that sound just like bottom bracket creaking. Never fear, the creaky crank syndrome can be cured with easy, as we show you in this video series. Check us out at www.bbinfinite.com For fast service and quickest responses contact us via Facebook or Instagram messenger, or email at info@bbinfinite.com.
The Cannondale Si crank is a wonderful modular crankset that is responsible for an awful lot of creaking that people have no idea it's their crank creaking. I'm going to show you the ins and outs of how to make sure your candle crank does not creak and if it is creaking how to fix it and it starts right here i just got done taking one of these bolts out whenever you take the bolts out come on in here and I'll show you need to inspect around this rim okay and around this area right here to make sure that this bolt is not cracked they can crack they do have quite a bit of torque on it it's a bit unusual but they do crack and when they do what it does is it doesn't put enough pressure on the arm and can cause a creak later on to the next one. there are several ways to take these arms off some of them require special tools some of them don't here's kind of a hybrid mix this is the tool right here that is usually supplied with a little piece that threads inside of here right there as you'll see it in there but what I usually like to use on top of this tool is your good old-fashioned crank arm puller from an isis or an Octolink bottom bracket of the past okay so once I get the crank off I want to draw your attention to this immediately okay this is the retaining ring right here that holds the spider onto the crank arm the reason why this is important for a lot of reasons when that thing is loose it will cause a creaking problem here's how I like to diagnose her right off the gun I go ahead and I put my hands like this and I put my thumbs on either side of here and I try to flex it I'm pushing it away I'm pushing it really hard away and then I grab it like this in my hands and I see if I can make it creak you absolutely need this tool it's very specific to the Si cranks if you want to come in here what it does is it as it gets down inside of those you see these grooves right there those match that go right down the side there you need to make sure that they're seated in there really well that it's not like you know cocked to the side or like partially now what I like to do is if you're just going to grab this and try to loosen it it's like 40Nm. it's going to be extremely difficult you're probably going to skip off and start to chew this thing up i like to take this thing it's got these nice flat sides on it I like to put it in a vise and you're going to want to get in here and uh line these up just like that make sure that make sure it's lined up all the way around okay so take a good look at it and uh you just got to kind of remember which way it looks lefty loops loosey righty tighty right so I just put pressure down on it so it doesn't want to skip on the tool and I just bump it so once I get this off the very next thing I want to do is do this right here hear that hear how it has a nice ring to it if this thing was cracked it would go dung like that it would sound you wouldn't be it would make a dead sound and if it's cracked you cannot reuse it of course okay the next thing i want to do is I want to go ahead and take this apart now let's go ahead and put it back together again and I want to show you guys this look inside there look inside there right there can you see that movement you can certainly hear it right there you can pair it up with the microphone so that's the issue we're trying to solve okay we want to we want to take care of that problem and we're going to take care of it with a little tube of this back from a good cleaning and all I did was use a toothbrush and some dawn dishwashing soap or some kind of liquid soap to get all the grease and oil off of because that will defeat the VibraTite or the another good one to use would be Loctite 609 fiber type 530 Loctite 609 are chemically almost identical and they will work in the same applications so now what I'm going to do now that I've got this completely dry and everything after a soap and soapy water bath is I am going to do something very simple and you've seen me do this in other videos I am just going to go ahead and get it all over these spots right here [Music] all right so yeah it's looking pretty messy but we want to go ahead and make sure we get it on there the right way see how it's popping up right there it's all together we're gonna take this lock ring you do not put grease on it okay yeah it's gonna get a little a little bit of a Loctite on it the lock ring actually says 34 foot-pounds on it all right so what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to move our torque wrench to 34 foot pounds and then we're going to come back in here and we're going to do like we did before now make note I've got it back in the vice I've got the crank arm clamped into the vise with some soft jaws okay these are non-marring like rubberized hard soft jaws so they will not they'll grip very well and they will not cause any damage to the crank arm this is a must you could use a couple of pieces of 1x4 or something if you're doing this at home and get away with the same thing all right so i want to go ahead and I'm going to get this thing lined up where it's supposed to be first rather than stick it on the wrench and then put the wrench on there because that's harder to do and now I'm going to try to use one fluid motion right and I'm going to tighten this thing to 34 foot-pounds all right perfect and guys the potency of this stuff cannot be underestimated I can tell you right now that I got this thing all nice and cleaned up now and I got all the residue off but if I took this lock ring back off after this was completely cured out for at least 24 hours and it even if longer than that I should have to take a hammer and I would have to take a hammer and tap this thing pretty hard to get it to finally break loose and come off whereas before if I took the lock ring off I could just shake it and it would fall off that's the difference it's rigidly affixed to the crank arm because creaks are caused by movement if you get rid of movement you get rid of creaks and that's what this is all about we also want to take this apart and the reason for that is twofold I don't trust that this interface over here has been cleaned and greased properly and we want to make sure the entire crank all the mating surfaces are fresh the other reason is it's not as important on this crank because this particular one is not the hologram the hologram is very important to look around the periphery of this hole and look all around inside of here and on this crank arm if this was out which will be in a second to look around there because they can develop cracks over time now that I got it all nice and cleaned up and put a little bit of grease on the end of this spindle and I'm going to put some inside here on the threads this way i don't have to put it directly on the threads of the bolt all right and then the bolt itself underneath the bolt head I am going to put a little bit of grease right there right this is going to help have a nice accurate torque spec when it all comes down to it and then a little bit there because these are all surfaces that are supposed to slip now I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to bolt this together using the specification that is printed on this bolt right there 40Nm, 30 foot pounds alright. I'm not going to bore you with that one but i can tell you right now once this is tightened I am going to take this entire assembly right here and I'm going to go put it in the freezer and it's going to be in there for about half an hour to an hour and what that's going to do is it is going to shrink the diameter of this very slightly so that it will slide into the bearings rather than having to use a hammer to put it in right from the freezer I want to make sure to get my get the right get the right spacer on the non-drive side this thing is nice and cold right now you can see it's kind of icy and I went ahead and I prepped this all out with some grease and now I'm going to show you guys how i do not need to use a hammer to put it in you know i shouldn't have to this thing was really hard to get out so this is going to make it significantly easier see that now you might have said to yourself that still looked hard i had to beat this thing out with a hammer to get it out so trust me that's a big improvement the reason why this is important is because and we need to work fast it's because we need this wave washer to be able to do its job and if the spindle is stuck in the bearings the wave washer can't do its job because it'll just get stuck wherever it is put by the friction come on in here and take a look you can see that I've got a little gap here where it needs to be uh they were nice enough to make this orange so it's real obvious that's sitting right about a you know 70 to 80 percent wave washer compression that's great on our product between 70 and 90 is great we want to see at least that much remember we have a true drive sleeve in between there so it cannot move the inner races toward each other and over preload them so in this case we want to see a little more compression here than a normal situation like a two piece from another manufacturer because they would not be able to handle that cranks wouldn't spin very well and as you can see we have no problem this cranks are spinning very well this grease is ice cold right now from that cold spindle but that is how you uh get the odds and ends out of these uh creaky sometimes creaky cannondale si cranks make sure that it doesn't cause you problems down
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