2manyoranges
Old School Grand Master
- Feedback
- View
I need a 68/73BB axle on purple (!) Hope 165 crankset which currently has an 83mm axle in it. No problem thought I, buy a new 133.5 axle from Tredz, buy a tool to go with it to remove the 'Do Not Remove' cap - and Rob's Your Lobster. When the tool arrives I undo the Do Not Undo cap and off it comes, easily. I stare at the end of the axle. Ah, slightly tapered. In the exact and precise Way of Hope. That's going to be a tight interference fit.
Right....straight onto the Wibbly Wobbly Way to find instructions on the Hope website. 404 page not found. Nothing anywhere. Ah one reference to 'I phoned Hope and they told me to take it to an engineering company with a hydraulic press'. Drat. No other posts. Weird. I could do with a press anyway, so I begin to look at two ton arbor presses. Yikes. Both expensive and space-consuming. I go to work and lose myself in stuff. And draw pictures of various arrangements of tubing and headset and BB presses. And get sidetracked by a thousand things for six weeks. And ride. And go to Iceland. Then today I actually got into the workshop and found the purpleness again, and stared grumpily at it whilst I cleaned and cleared the workshop. And did the chain on the Ragley. Thinking. Thinking. So I get out the pressing tubes and presses. And set up the axle with the Cyclo headset press and start to t i g h t e n. Nowt. So I dismantle the tube and press and do my usual thing of literally imagining myself in amongst the molecules on the axle and the crank. It's a good technique. I think myself into the splines and the different materials. That interference fit needs releasing. Lots of energy applied in exactly the right place (the definition of 'engineering'. Right....I know what to do. Out comes a perfect socket (19mm) which matches axle end exactly. And a piece of PVC plumbing tubing. And a bloody huge soft hammer. It's quite a hard soft hammer. The biggest I have. Actually not the biggest since that other one is more of a comedy hammer. But I have a Very Heavy soft hammer by Stanley and that feels right. I set up the pipe on the bench, the crank inside and the socket just right. WHACK. Nothing. OK, so this needs to be against the concrete floor and not the bench. Switch to the floor and get everything just so - including a piece of thick paper under the tube so that if the axle does ping out, it won't be damaged on the rough floor. This will need one Just Right Whack. I think. But if it doesn't work I am not going to just carry on - I do not want to damage this wonderful piece of machined alloy. So.....W H A C K.
And P I N G, out comes the axle, perfectly.
So...that's how you do it.
Re-assembly is simple, but needs a 36inch breaker bar to wind the axle in. Hang on. In writing this I just realised that the new crankset I have has a line of blue Hope grease around the crank where the axle goes in. Shit should I have greased the new axle before I put it in? Why...well to prevent galvanic corrosion? Well they are both aluminium - but maybe slightly different alloys? So galvanic corrosion is a possibility. OK...time to go and crack it again....
Update
Yep this works. Out it comes again on the third whack and in again with grease. Done.
Right....straight onto the Wibbly Wobbly Way to find instructions on the Hope website. 404 page not found. Nothing anywhere. Ah one reference to 'I phoned Hope and they told me to take it to an engineering company with a hydraulic press'. Drat. No other posts. Weird. I could do with a press anyway, so I begin to look at two ton arbor presses. Yikes. Both expensive and space-consuming. I go to work and lose myself in stuff. And draw pictures of various arrangements of tubing and headset and BB presses. And get sidetracked by a thousand things for six weeks. And ride. And go to Iceland. Then today I actually got into the workshop and found the purpleness again, and stared grumpily at it whilst I cleaned and cleared the workshop. And did the chain on the Ragley. Thinking. Thinking. So I get out the pressing tubes and presses. And set up the axle with the Cyclo headset press and start to t i g h t e n. Nowt. So I dismantle the tube and press and do my usual thing of literally imagining myself in amongst the molecules on the axle and the crank. It's a good technique. I think myself into the splines and the different materials. That interference fit needs releasing. Lots of energy applied in exactly the right place (the definition of 'engineering'. Right....I know what to do. Out comes a perfect socket (19mm) which matches axle end exactly. And a piece of PVC plumbing tubing. And a bloody huge soft hammer. It's quite a hard soft hammer. The biggest I have. Actually not the biggest since that other one is more of a comedy hammer. But I have a Very Heavy soft hammer by Stanley and that feels right. I set up the pipe on the bench, the crank inside and the socket just right. WHACK. Nothing. OK, so this needs to be against the concrete floor and not the bench. Switch to the floor and get everything just so - including a piece of thick paper under the tube so that if the axle does ping out, it won't be damaged on the rough floor. This will need one Just Right Whack. I think. But if it doesn't work I am not going to just carry on - I do not want to damage this wonderful piece of machined alloy. So.....W H A C K.
And P I N G, out comes the axle, perfectly.
So...that's how you do it.
Re-assembly is simple, but needs a 36inch breaker bar to wind the axle in. Hang on. In writing this I just realised that the new crankset I have has a line of blue Hope grease around the crank where the axle goes in. Shit should I have greased the new axle before I put it in? Why...well to prevent galvanic corrosion? Well they are both aluminium - but maybe slightly different alloys? So galvanic corrosion is a possibility. OK...time to go and crack it again....
Update
Yep this works. Out it comes again on the third whack and in again with grease. Done.
Last edited:
