View Single Post
Old 12-03-13, 12:15 PM
  #13  
rhm
multimodal commuter
 
rhm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: NJ, NYC, LI
Posts: 19,808

Bikes: 1940s Fothergill, 1959 Allegro Special, 1963? Claud Butler Olympic Sprint, Lambert 'Clubman', 1974 Fuji "the Ace", 1976 Holdsworth 650b conversion rando bike, 1983 Trek 720 tourer, 1984 Counterpoint Opus II, 1993 Basso Gap, 2010 Downtube 8h, and...

Mentioned: 584 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 1908 Post(s)
Liked 574 Times in 339 Posts
Crank arm length does not matter much except in a few circumstances:

Longer arms give more leverage, which is an advantage at low cadence situations, like when you have to muscle over rocks, through snow, sand, etc. Otherwise, not so much.

Shorter arms let you spin, which is an advantage if you're riding all day.

Do not switch to much larger crank arms than your knees are already accustomed to; the increased motion will not be good for your knees.

I'm 6' tall and ride mostly on 165 and 160 cranks; I have 170's (and even 171's on one) on other bikes and that's okay. I'd go with shorter if it were easy; but there is only a limited selection of cranks shorter than 165 mm.
rhm is offline