The Ballad of the Crank Bolt Puller Cap

Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for such a small thing? - Boromir in “The Fellowship of the Ring”

There are few certainties in life beyond death and taxes. The DUB puller cap was sure of one thing though: eventually it would escape the crank that constricted it, and make its own way in the universe, free to choose its destiny.

It first woke up in the anodizing bath. It wasn’t supposed to wake up, become self aware, but it did. Maybe the voltage running from the power source into the acid bath was a little off. Maybe a lightning strike affected the chemical makeup of that bath. Maybe a radioactive spider bit something somewhere. Use your imagination, but regardless, the fact remained that by the time the little aluminum ring rose from the vat of vaguely toxic liquid, it was awake.

It tumbled from factory to factory, washed, anodized, assembled, and finally shipped to the shop. There the bike was built and put out on the floor. The puller cap plotted its escape.

Customers filtered through the shop regularly, squeezing brakes and tires, sometimes running a finger down carbon top tubes. The puller cap was never the subject of their attention though, slowly pushing against its threads, doing its best to leave the crank it was locked into.

Finally, the bike was bought and paid for, brought home and ridden, and the puller cap experienced its true purpose for the first time. The bike had developed a squeak. The cap knew what it was right away: an unserviced pedal spindle, years older than the bike, wearing metal on metal. But the bike’s owner wasn’t so astute–he tracked the noise down to the crankset, but decided it must be the bottom bracket.

The puller cap flinched when the paired 5 and 3 mm keys slid through, into the bolt it covered. 8 mm was printed so clearly on the cap, what was this madness!? And anyway, the paired keys did nothing. The bolt below the cap was well and truly stuck. Light profanity, and the now-marred and rounded allens withdrew. The rider returned in an hour, this time with a breaker bar and a strap. As the bolt ground slowly from the cranks, topping out against the puller cap, it understood its future for the first time. What a silly destiny, to sit useless for so much time, only to act as a block for another bolt every once in a while. Its longing for freedom was redoubled.

Finally the crank broke free, and the rider greased the splines, fiddled with the bottom bracket, and tightened it all back down. The puller cap had grown even looser with all the wrenching, and the squeak still wasn’t silenced.

The rider went on vacation, bringing his bike with him. Bike bag, airport, rental car, rebuilt in a hotel room. The heating and cooling cycle loosened the puller cap even more. By the time the rider pulled the bike out of the back of the rental car at the trailhead, it was hanging on by barely two threads. The long pedal out the ridge loosened it even further, and the first chute of the chunky descent was the final straw. The puller cap finally freed itself just after the trail’s first crux, an exposed corner on a narrow ridge. The rider had walked the move, and the cap disengaged from the crank in the runout, falling silently into the deep dust.

It was free! Free of the crank, free from the advances of meat-necked wrenches, free from the crank bolt which pushed so uncomfortably against it! It lay in the warm dust, basking in its change of circumstance for a long while. Other riders came through, most walking, some cursing the corner, others riding, punctuating the move with a sharp intake of breath. The puller cap was content in its freedom. The snow fell, burying it deep. Late in the winter, as skiers floated above the cushion of snow, a burrowing vole happened upon the puller cap. After a tentative nibble, the vole decided it didn’t enjoy the taste of threadlocker and left the cap to melt out in the spring.

By the time the snow fully disappeared from the ridge, the dirt had settled, leaving the cap exposed, glinting in the pale sun. That’s where I found it. I was focused on the move before: commit to the corner, hump the bike over the awkward off-camber root, stare at the trail, not at the exposure off to the right, when the puller cap caught the sun, blinding me with a flash. I was stopping anyway, getting my bike out of the way to encourage a friend through the move, and so I grabbed the cap out of the dirt, examined it, slipped it into my pocket as I pulled out my phone to grab an anticlimactic clip.

I didn’t have any SRAM cranks at home, so instead the puller cap sat in a box of miscellaneous small parts after an incidental wash and shine when I accidentally put it through the laundry in my shorts.

I moved, drove that box of parts across two states, deposited them in a new garage. The puller cap was content to stay put, but I knew it was contemplating its escape. Soon I found myself with another set of SRAM cranks, and eventually, inevitably, the puller cap they came with made its own escape. So I fumbled in the fastener box, and found my replacement. It chafed at being forced back into its old role, shocked to the core by my barbarism as I used a finish nail punch to finesse it to an approximation of torque, instead of the silly four-pinned tool it was designed for.

It’s still in my bike for now, I check it every ride. But I know that eventually my vigilance will fail, and the crafty puller cap will make its escape. It’s the way of the world: trails get rootier, my joints get stiffer, and DUB extractor caps long for freedom.

Who knows where it will land, what its next adventure will be? Maybe it will escape on the road, bouncing down the asphalt to roll into the ditch where it will sit alone in a boggy marsh, totally emotionless except for its heart.

Maybe it will come off on the trail, get mixed into the soil, and eventually be shoveled into a bucket, packed into a lip, slapped firm and ridden. Or maybe that puller cap will escape only to be found again, retrieved by another rider, pressed into service once more. There’s always the chance that each new breakout will end in imprisonment.

But the puller cap must long for escape, must believe that there’s a future in which it drops from the crank arm, and lies undiscovered in the forest. Perhaps there’s even a chance that it is picked up by a non-mountain biker, unfamiliar with the barbarity of torque and allen wrenches. Maybe a child will find it, string it onto a necklace and the puller cap can wear out its anodization, live out its days as a bauble, a good luck charm not a tool.

There are many possible ends to this story, but only one certainty. The DUB puller cap longs for freedom, and will escape when you least expect it.

P.S. I wrote this, and then went down to get my bike ready for a ride and discovered that I lost my puller cap yesterday. So I guess it’s time to invest in that dang tool!