Yesterday while riding, my left crank just fell off. Luckily I didn’t lose control, neither I had a motorcycle or bike on my rear, could have been dangerous. Obviously the picture was taken after I put it back.
The bike is 3 years old and I’ve done about 5000 km on it. I know for a fact that the guy at the LBS who built it for me was torquing everything to spec. I’ve never removed the crank since I bought the bike, so it’s not a case of putting it back the wrong way.
What could have gone wrong? Is this a normal thing to happen, and should the lesson here be to make sure everything is torqued correctly every once in a while?
Some extra thoughts/info:
– Not sure if it’s a good habit, but I tend to get on my bike by running and hopping on the left pedal, and sitting on it on the move. Not sure if describe it correctly, but I hope you get the picture.
– That day I had ridden for 5-10 minutes on cobblestone pavement, and the vibrations where intense. Also, it was raining. I wonder if this was the final straw.
– It’s a touring bike and had some share of week-long tricks with huge loads on it.
– When this happened, I was on flat, good quality pavement, I was not putting any particular force on.
Is it a bad idea if I just clean it, put some anti-freeze, torque it to spec and keep riding?
2 Comments
well that’s obviously not good.
Hi all,
Yesterday while riding, my left crank just fell off. Luckily I didn’t lose control, neither I had a motorcycle or bike on my rear, could have been dangerous. Obviously the picture was taken after I put it back.
The bike is 3 years old and I’ve done about 5000 km on it. I know for a fact that the guy at the LBS who built it for me was torquing everything to spec. I’ve never removed the crank since I bought the bike, so it’s not a case of putting it back the wrong way.
What could have gone wrong? Is this a normal thing to happen, and should the lesson here be to make sure everything is torqued correctly every once in a while?
Some extra thoughts/info:
– Not sure if it’s a good habit, but I tend to get on my bike by running and hopping on the left pedal, and sitting on it on the move. Not sure if describe it correctly, but I hope you get the picture.
– That day I had ridden for 5-10 minutes on cobblestone pavement, and the vibrations where intense. Also, it was raining. I wonder if this was the final straw.
– It’s a touring bike and had some share of week-long tricks with huge loads on it.
– When this happened, I was on flat, good quality pavement, I was not putting any particular force on.
Is it a bad idea if I just clean it, put some anti-freeze, torque it to spec and keep riding?