It’s not a gap but a spring washer. It’s there to preload the bearings. If you tightened up the crankset with no gap it’d bind and/or crush the bearings unless the machining of the bottom bracket area and the spindle and crank arm faces was to impractically high tolerances. There’s many ways of designing this and Brompton chose this route. It’s fine and quite easy to service.
1 Comment
It’s not a gap but a spring washer. It’s there to preload the bearings. If you tightened up the crankset with no gap it’d bind and/or crush the bearings unless the machining of the bottom bracket area and the spindle and crank arm faces was to impractically high tolerances. There’s many ways of designing this and Brompton chose this route. It’s fine and quite easy to service.