Stonglight Pulsion help please....

[in2toyz]

Can someone please tell me the trick to removing the crank bolts from the Pulsion Cranks. It looks like I would use a spanner similar to the older shimano cranks, but it doesn't fit. I even made a spanner that fit, but the self extracters don't budge. Also, does anyone know if these are M15 bolts because I could not seem to get the cranks to go on a FSA Ti Platinum Pro ISIS BB that uses M14 bolts. I've done a search and have seen that others have removed the bolts, but I sure can't seem to figure out how. Any help would be appreciated.

[mike]

To remove the dust caps, i had to modify a shimano dust cap tool that came with my dura ace cranks, 9 speed. you have to file one side so it is wide enough to fit the dust cap holes. to remove the crank bolt, i believe i used an 8 mm hex wrench.

mike

[Superlite]

No offense dude, but if you can't figure out how to remove the crank bolts take it to your shop.

[in2toyz]

No offense dude, but if you don't have anything positive to add, don't waste my time.

Mike, thanks for you reply.

[Superlite]

Sorry if you took offense, it was not my intent. I use to own pulsion cranks myself, the bolts come right off. I don't see how you couldn't remove them, they are standard. If you take them to a shop it will take 1 sec for them to do the job with the right tool, maybe that's your problem?

[big fellow]

it's not the bolts that won't come off, it's the dust caps. the dust caps on my pulsion are a pain the gluteus maximus to get off. my LBS could not get it off with the standard prong-type tool

being the thinker that I am what i did was get 2 small screw drivers (and I mean very small diameter), put one in each hole, grip both of them (at the same time) with pliers, and then twist. it came off much easier and with a lot less obscenities

give that a try

what BB you using out of interest?

[in2toyz]

Thanks for the reply bigfelllow, you are exactly right, it is the dust covers. The bike shop hadn't had a pair of pulsions in yet and didn't want to mess with them for fear of screwing them up since the standard shimano dust cover tool would not fit. Now that I know the covers a supposed to come off like standard shimano, I will craft a tool. As far as bottom bracket, I was going to use a FSA Platinum Pro Ti since I've had one on my other bike with no problems, but I've gone ahead an ordered the Stonglight BB to see how it works.

[mlc]

in2toyz - i have the pulsion cranks and also purchased the stronglight twister ti bb. however, when torquing up the non drive side to 40NM as per instructions the spindle became difficult to turn. sent item back, rpelaced, and the same again, depsite tapped and perfect bb shell alignment. would be interested to know how you get on with fitting it. i have now gone for the fsa platimun but not titanium as i wanted to confirm it worked o.k before splashing more cash. bolt size on fsa plat is m15 so no need for me to play with dust caps. fsa works a treat but the engineering / general quality of the stronghlight bb is way better.....even if it didn't work for me!

[big fellow]

@ in2toyz and mlc

FYI - when my LBS initially installed my stronglight twister BB for some reason they could not fully get in all together, the non drive side cup was still extending about 2 mm outside the bike's bb shell. really realy weird stuff

eventually they fixed it but I think they may have killed the twister as it only lasted about another month before it was creaking like a 500 year old unoiled door - in the end i had to remove the damn thing

in the process one of the extracting bolts came apart, and am now trying to get the bolt replace. hence my warning, be careful as so far their customer service is TERRIBLE

i would be most interested to see how you go...

[in2toyz]

Thanks to the help of Mike and Big Fellow I altered a shimano dust cap removal tool last night and was able to get the dust caps off of the Pulsions. I can't believe how tight they were. I mounted the cranks last night using a Token Scandium bottom bracket using the long bolts that came with the BB. I had the same issues with the Token BB that mlc noted in that when torquing the non drive side the spindle became hard to turn. I ended up torquing the drive side to 40Nm and the non drive side to about 20Nm. This seemed to work fine for now. I will see how long it lasts. So far with an hour on the dymo myte rollers it seems fine. I've got a Stonglight BB on the way just in case, and if all else fails I will go back to an FSA Platinum Pro Ti. I've got one that has been on my bike for 5,000 miles and is now on my wife's Orca and is still going strong. I probably should have just gone with one from the start, but it's too tempting to try other options.

The other thing I learned is that the Pulsion bolts are M15 size and the long Token bolts are M14 size as are the FSA Platinum Pro Ti bolts, but as long as you use the right bolts with the right BB the crank can't tell the difference.