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The spindle seems to be sliding out of the crank arm (and making a creaking sound) in my 2007 Lemond Poprad Disc (https://www.vintage-trek.com/Trek-Fisher-Klein-Lemond/2007lemond.pdf). This is a road/cross bike with a Bontrager Race Cross GXP 46/38 crank.

My local bike shop seems to have misdiagnosed the noise, replaced the perfectly-good bottom bracket, and now say they can't easily find a crank to replace what I have.

Does this make sense? Is it harder than choosing something that says GXP?

They want to replace the crankset and (again) the bottom bracket and are suggesting their own road crankset and a separate bottom bracket. They are saying they are GXB (a typo?).

UPDATE: GXB is this shop's custom cute name for something that's 1mm different from GXP that they manufactured themselves years ago.

Their claim is that any standard GXP crank will be very expensive (CA$300-$460).

I could use different gearing, but I like what I have for hilly roads. I have mostly used the bike for road and touring, not cross (and no longer racing).

They also say that they have never before seen a spindle detaching from its crank arm like this.

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    The piece of information left out here is whether you have any use for cross gearing (not unlikely unless you're actually racing cyclocross) or if the bike is being used as a road all-arounder like many older cross bikes end up.
    – Nathan Knutson
    Commented Sep 22 at 16:20
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    Shimano make 46/36 chainsets at various levels. The bottom bracket will be an easy conversion, not expensive parts. Why not do that?
    – Noise
    Commented Sep 22 at 17:18
  • @Noise I'm not sure what they're not offering me that. They are saying GXP parts are expensive and hard to find. Maybe by "conversion" you mean that I could buy a bb and crank, non-GXP, for cheaper?
    – CPBL
    Commented Sep 22 at 18:15
  • If the shop has some in-house parts that are incompatible with everything else, I can understand why they want to sell the inventory instead of writing it off. Their prices for GXP are about twice the prices from bike-components.de and others, but I've understood those are cheaper than distributor prices so maybe it's a reasonable markup.
    – ojs
    Commented Sep 22 at 18:26
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    Yes, buy shimano bb and crank. It's so easy! It'll work well and not expensive really.
    – Noise
    Commented Sep 22 at 19:18

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GXP is SRAM's older standard. Looking around on US sites, there clearly is old stock that's for sale, but I don't know that anyone credible is making new GXP cranks (there's some listed on AliExpress, though). SRAM has moved to the DUB standard.

There are people on YouTube who seem to have enough trust in the stuff they get from AliExpress. I'm not sure what the import duty situation is for Canada, but my recollection is that it may not be favorable. As for the lack of GXP cranksets, Canada is 30 million people and is very spread out. It is possible there simply isn't anyone stocking replacement GXP cranks. And whoever is stocking them on the US side probably wants to keep higher-end stock, rather than lower-end.

This is why Noise suggested you consider a Shimano crankset and BB. You could find an 11s crank like a 105, or a used 10s item. I assume you have 10s SRAM. The chain is compatible with Shimano 10 and 11 speed components. The 12 speed AXS chain is a different story.

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  • Shop owner claimed that it would have to be Tiagra, because 105 doesn't exist (anymore) for 10-speed. And that it would take two months to backorder the Tiagra crank. But he had not looked up the price before I shared your suggestion, so quoting me the GXP price as the other option seems to have been disingenuous or ignorant, yes @ojs. Thanks, all!
    – CPBL
    Commented Oct 1 at 17:34

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