crank puller

One of the ways you can keep your bike riding smoothly is by giving it a good cleaning, both inside and out. Overhauling a bottom bracket will most likely not be in your weekly cleaning regimen and depending on how you ride, you might not even have to really look at it too much. But it is a good thing to know how to do when the time comes.

For this task, you will need several things:

1. Crank puller
2. 17 mm open end wrench
3. Adjustable wrench
4. Bottom bracket wrench
5. Pin Spanner
6. Hooked lockring wrench
7. 36 mm wrench
8. Solvent 
9. Grease

Keep rags on hand so that you can keep your hands and your bike clean. Small trays or containers are also handy when you take out the parts, and especially the ball bearings, so that you won’t lose them. And buying ball bearings can be a pain in the ass.

This tool will also be determined by what type of crank and bottom bracket you have. With a simple square taper bottom bracket then the crank pull in the picture above will work great.

If you have the right tools removing your crank is a relatively simple and painless process.  In this video we removed a square taper crank, also know as a cotterless crankset.  These days there are many other varieties of crank connection systems, like Shimano's Octalink, or FSA's ISIS.  But on the majority of older bicycles, square taper is what you will be dealing with and in my opinion performs just as well as all that gimmicky new crap.  You just have to get out and ride!

After you've assembled the necessary tools the you're ready to remove the crank you can get started!

1. If you removing the right side crank arm, lift the chain off the chainring and rest it on the bottom bracket shell.