Install External Ball Bearings on Mountain Bikes

Video Transcript

"We're now going to focus on reinstalling two-piece crank arms with external-bearing bottom brackets. I've left the chain and the whole drive train out of the equation for simplicity's sake, and so I can more easily show you what I'm doing. I've got my two crank arms. In this case, it's a Race Face setup with the one-key release. So, first thing to do is to slide my drive-side crank arm back on. I don't need to grease the spindle here. It's a pretty tight interface there. There's a plastic bearing or bushing in there that pretty much serves all those purposes. So I'm just making sure I put this dust cap back on. So the dust cap goes on like that. Make sure I get everything lined up, and then I can just sort of tap it back in and across. It's a lot easier than it came out. One thing that that means is that every time I do it, I'm loosening things up a little bit, which is less than fully-optimal. So now, I make sure I put my micro-spacer back on my crank arm so that my chain line's good and nothing rubs. Actually, I'll put it on my spindle. I'm also going to put a light coat of grease on the spindle to make this whole process better. And I'm going to put some grease inside the spindle for the bolt. Now, I've got my micro-spacer on there, different chain line setups on different bikes might require different numbers of spacers. But now I slide this on as far as I can go with the bolt, which isn't far, but I'm sure to be parallel. And because it's splined, it's going to want to line up correctly. There we go. I'm parallel or as close to it as I can be. I'm tightening this up as much as I can. Now it looks like it's time for me to move to working with the longer end of the Allen wrench, and there we go. I have this torqued until it's good and tight, and I've reinstalled my two-piece crank arm setup. As you can see, this bike has a chain guide on there, which makes the installation of all this stuff a little more difficult, but if you'd had a front derailleur setup, it would be pretty similar. And now you'd just put your chain back on there and be good to go."