Install Square Taper Cranks on a Mountain Bike

Video Transcript

"What used to be the most common type of cranks set up on road bikes and mountain bikes have definitely fallen out of fashion is what is called a square taper crank set. I am going to show you how to install one and how to remove one today and probably if you have a bike that is more than 10 years old, you would have set up like this. What you have is a bottom bracket axle which goes inside the center of your frame and has some cups and rotates around the bearings and stuff. Square taper, I think it is like a 11 degree taper. Then you see the crank arm that is also tapered and its interface just like that. The bolt was either a 15 millimeter hex head screw or an 8 millimeter Allen wrench just pulls it on. The square taper interface, we don't want to use any grease or anything like that on the spindle or on the crank arms because if we do, it will pull things on too far and deform the crank arm. The only time you want to use some sort of lubricant, is if you have a titanium spindle which those are for high end bikes and are really expensive and probably don't have unless you've had the bike for about 10 years or so. Now we are going to move on next to the International Supplying Standard Interface."