>>1076945>>1077103Final report: Mission accomplished.
According to LBS the "plate"-thing is useless, only purpose it serves is to aid during assembly.
They did however hint that it's caused by BB loosening and the servicing they'd do would go like this:
a) disassemble, check, reassemble
b) if anything is beyond saving, replace
Figured - heck - I can do disassembling and reassembling myself!
Arrived back at my place and that's exactly what I ended up doing.
Thorough analysis revealed:
- BB was in an atrocious state. It was so loose that it was ready to rip my frame threads.
- The culprit crank arm indeed has bent splines, just a tiny bit, but enough to stop it from sliding in.
Disassembled everything, cleaned it, regreased, assembled everything but the crank arm.
Then it dawned on me: if splines are bent so that they don't slide in, perhaps instead of sliding it in, I should open it wider, insert it, and tighten it up right on the splines?
Wasn't the brightest idea, but the alternative was replacing the crank so in reality I'm not risking anything.
I did it, used a pair of goddamn scissors for the job (needed some leverage to widen it up). It worked.
Moreover the bent splines are serving as an additional tightening measure now, and the crank won't budge even when pulled hard.
I'll keep a careful eye on it in the following months - make sure neither BB not crank is loosening - but it's in a great shape already.
Thanks again for the tips, especially the one about bent splines - I would have *definitely* missed it under all that grease if I didn't know what to look for.
Once again /bqg/ doesn't disappoint!
