Idiot jammed their bike between mine in a parking spot with enough force to bend my left pedal in the crank. Guess I need to replace the crank and pedal? Both sides, probably?
by Philliphobia
Idiot jammed their bike between mine in a parking spot with enough force to bend my left pedal in the crank. Guess I need to replace the crank and pedal? Both sides, probably?
by Philliphobia
15 Comments
The pedal is useable as I didn’t even notice til I got home, albiet my foot position felt weird. I tried to unscrew it but it’s completely stuck as the threads are mangled
That crank arm is gone. Pedal might be safe, look at its threads when you’ll extract it, if you somehow manage to do it (angle grinder / dremel on a crank arm? Or a hammer/mallet on a 15mm key) You probably could helicoil the crank arm if you don’t cut it, but it might be cheaper to just buy a new one. And I see cracks on it, that is concerning. I think, left crank arms are sold separately.
On a side note, it’s a pretty good reason to upgrade your cranks&BB to something with a hollow axle (I assume your cranks were square tapered as of now) and get a new set of wide platform shiny looking closed bearing pedals 🙂
Are you sure that’s what happened? Because the pedal interface is usually pretty strong. You could pick up the entire bike by the pedal and have no effect. You could have person standing on the pedal jumping up and down and there would be no effect.
It looks way more like the pedal was never in there properly in the first place. I don’t really see how jamming another bike against it, no matter how violently could actually cause this.
Pedal threads are steel so they’re probably fine. Don’t spend a bunch of $ converting to a different system. Just buy a set of cranks that fit your current bb and have at it. Bonus, if you get your cranks at the lbs, they’ll install them for free.
Just get a single left hand crank off eBay. Match it as close as you can to the one that’s knackered, especially the length.
I doubt force alone would cause this, it wasn’t fitted properly in the first place I reckon, cycling on a loose pedal would cause this and you probably wouldn’t have noticed till it fell out.
I weight 120kg currently. I can stand on one pedal, even the cheap chinese ebikes ones, and they survive. Something else is the issue here friend.
(yes I’ve got fat as fuck, working on it 💪)
The crank is softer than the pedal spindle. It was definitely either cross threaded or not fully tightened.
It wasn’t attached correctly in the first place. It has likely worked loose over time and the crack appearing in the crank is due to damage and fatigue rather than a single blow from another bike. (If you hit a pedal with a bike wheel, the wheel will break, if you hit a pedal with the tube of a frame, the tube will get dented). You would need a sledgehammer to cause that kind of damage with a just a few hits.
Note that the L pedal is L threaded, so don’t mangle the threads by trying to turn it the wrong way to remove it.
You can fix this by simply buying a replacement crank arm. The 2 things you need to specify are length (yours will say on it) and attachment type (square taper or ISIS). 95% chance yours is square taper.
You will need a crank puller to remove the old crank from the bbb, you may as well do this now so that you can check whether the attachment is square taper or ISIS before searching for a replacement.
If this all sounds like too much work, just take it to your lbs. The parts cost for a LHS crank arm replacement is well under 100USD for that one, and labour is well under an hour.
I think it was just loose, and when you applied pressure that damaged it. I’ve just had the same issue on my brand new bike. They haven’t fastened it properly.
The threads of the crank arm might not be beyond saving. A bike co-op or shop with tool kit like [this one](https://northwestbicycle.com/collections/thread-repair/products/unior-proprietary-reaming-pedal-tap-thread-insert-set-9-16-20-pedal-inserts-brass-silver-tl1430) can cut new bigger thread and screw in an adapter to accept your pedal threads.
I think that kit had a weird name, I just can’t remember it right now
Yes that wasn’t installed properly in the first place. You could take it out, wire brush the threads on the pedal clean and try installing it from the back of the crank to chase the crank threads out then remove and try to install properly again.
Nah nobody wants to accept fault when cross threading their pedals. Amazon is filled with 1 star reviews on bikes saying the the left pedal/crank is defective.
You can remove the pedal and chase the threads but that is aluminum and most likely not fixable
Take theirs and replace with yours.
Crank arm yes, pedal maybe…both sides? Only if you’re thinking about an upgrade. Then it’s at least partial justification.