Late 90s Shimano SLX crank, assembly question?

[GideonReade]

Hi, In pursuit of an annoying creak, which probably is BB but might not be, I was going to take off the chainrings, clean all up, and reassemble.

But on looking at its backside, I'm intrigued to see the crank and spider held together in a possibly dismantleable way. Or a possibly creaky way. As photo: Can anyone throw light on this? Is it likely to creak? Can I usefully strip it down? Picture shows, arrow points at apparently the gap of a circlip.

Addition 1: Bike's probably only done 6,000 miles in its 22 year life, and rarely wet.

Addition 2: When reassembling chainrings: Grease or no grease (always a good question for a debate )

Cheers

[PT1029]

It is a lock ring, right hand thread.

[TheBomber]

Middleburn chainsets have a lockring like that as the crank and spider are separate parts - but there’s no circlip. Do you have the tool for the lockring? If it’s like the one used on Middleburn it is (was) used on some bottom brackets too but if you don’t have one it might be cheaper to pursue the creak elsewhere first.

As for greasing the chainring bolts - yes to an anti seize grease on the clean threads. Not on the barrel of the interlock nut as you want that to bind to the chainring and not rotate. Brucey recommends tapping the thread of the nut so that the bolt turns easily and avoids having to use those horrible notch spanners. But you’ll likely need to buy the tap as it’s not a common size.

[Jdsk]

Is it the same SLX system as in these instructions?
https://si.shimano.com/pdfs/dm/DM-MAFC002-04-ENG.pdf

Jonathan

[gregoryoftours]

You can get a pronounced creak just from a crank bolt that should be tighter. Did you check that it was torqued to spec before you removed the crank? I'd probably try reassembling before messing with the spider lock ring. I'd grease the surfaces of the chainrings that interface, and I'd grease the outer part of the chainrings bolts and thread lock on the threads. Also anti seize on the pedal threads, and while the cranks are off remove the bottom bracket, and refit with anti seize.