[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by Verdoro 68

The Viton seal clearly works well for a lot of folks with serrated cranks, but it seems like the graphite seal is much more of a sure bet. It's also surprisingly easy to install compared to the BOP seals. In hindsight, I should have skipped the two piece experiment and just gone straight for the graphite seal, but I was following Butler and BOP's recommendations.

Well....yes and no. You also have to ask yourself how often people are actually driving these things to get any real world results for comparison sake.

Driving something 1,000 miles a year for the last few years doesn't amount to much as that is honestly just sitting most of the time. Chances of a leak are minimized.
If someone wants to call that a success, well then I guess

Fact is though, a rubber seal like that is designed for a nice smooth surface. If you look at OEM cranks that use seals like that from the factory, you won't find serrations that I've ever seen. They are smooth and polished. At a minimal, using those seals on a serrated crank, the serrations should be polished to some degree to knock down the sharp edges, otherwise they will tend to grab those seals over time and chew away at them.

I would take a guess that success stories with a rubber seal and serrated crank or more than likely on 50 year old used cranks that are already pretty well smooth from 200,000 miles of a rope seal rubbing on it.
That brand new crank you had with fresh serrations, as it was, I wouldn't think would be long for this world with a rubber seal on it.

I feel you went the right direction and fingers crossed it gives you years of trouble free service. I like the build and exactly how I'd do it if I had those parts laying around.