What do you do when your old M972 XTR chainrings wear out…

In giving the new old superlight a tune up I noticed that the chainrings are showing signs of wear so I put “replace chainrings” on the to do list. No problem, put it on the To DO list.

But it is a problem. The 2002 Shimano FC-M952 has a very functional but totally non standard design. It is spiderless and has an unusual 68/110 four bolt pattern. The replacement rings for this kit are almost impossible to find and when you do they are expensive. I could replace the whole crankset but now we are talking hundreds of dollars for something equivalent to the XTR.

After a lot of googling I found that Middleburn in the UK makes an XTR M952 replacement spider. This spider replaces the original spider from XTR M952 cranks, allowing you to run your choice of 4 bolt 104/64 BCD chainrings.

MTB Tandems sells these and other Middleburn components (scroll to the very bottom of the page). I may just keep the old XTR BB abd crank arms and convert to Middleburn chainrings using this adapter. Or any other 64/104 BCD chainrings for that matter.