Derailed

Anyone have any familiarity with these? My fixed gear commuter is ready for some new cranks; I set it up with cranks off of a bike that had been ridden loose, and I've never been able to get them to stop creaking (and I've cranked them down HARD).

Nashbar has the above mentioned cranks on what appears to be a pretty good sale for $55. With a Shimano bottom bracket and chainring I can have this all done for ~$100, which is cheap enough that I'm tempted to go for it.

Oh, there's one more issue: these are splined (Shimano standard). Nashbar does not recommend a bottom bracket to go with these, but I'd bet they're designed use the 109.5. However, I use a Surly "New Hub" (135 mm) on my Cross Check and a Surly cog... I think I'd be in reasonable shape, chainline-wise, if I go with the larger 118.5 mm bottom bracket. Thoughts?

Thanks much for any opinions!

-D

Derailed

Now that I've searched around the web a little more, I'm not surprised that no one seems to have any experience with these: The only significant mention of these cranks I can find is through Nashbar. Nobody else seems to sell these and they aren't mentioned on Ritchey's website. Weird. Best case scenario is that they're the same arms used for the Pro Cross V cranks (which are okay from what I've heard), but packaged as road cranks (i.e. 53/39 chainrings) in limited quantity to test the market through Nashbar.

Anyway, being the fool that I am I decided to give them a try. I'll post back if they're remarkable in any way once I get them and get some miles in (positive or negative).

-D

fix

Go for it! I've always had good luck with Ritchey products, although their customer service of late has been...lacking.

Derailed

Now that these are installed I thought I'd make a final post to this thread, just in case someone winds up here on a search. If you aren't here on a search, you'll likely be bored to tears if you continue reading:

Most importantly: The 118 spindle lenght did turn out to produce a perfect (as far as I can tell visually) chainline. Perhaps this is a well-known rule, but in my limited experience it seems that the outer chainring position on a standard road double crankset gives very good chainline with a 135 Surly New Hub when coupled with a bottom bracket designed for a road triple. What I hear more often is that the New Hub works well with the outer position on a mountain crankset, but I prefer the aesthetic of road doubles.

The only issue I ran into was dealing with a chainring. I typically ride 42x16 and didn't want to use either of the included chainrings (39 and 53). I initially got a Rocket Ring from Harris Cylcery, but even though it was the correct BCD, it didn't even come close to fitting. I've heard of others filing them down to work, but I decided to return it and go with something different. I ended up going with a Salsa ring, and it looks, fits and works great.

One odd thing about these cranks is that they use the crank arm as one of the contact points for the chainring (still a total of 5 contact points). This isn't a big deal for me, but it means that the antijam pin on the big ring is not in the same position as it would be on standard five spider arm cranks, and this could be a minor issue for future chainring needs. I'm going to sell the chainrings on eBay and suspect I won't get much, even though these look to be great rings, due to the weird antijam position.

Overall the cranks seem fine in terms of stiffness and appearance, and I ended up doing everything: cranks, chainring of choice and bottom bracket, for less than $100 (maybe as low as $80 depending on how much I get for the Ritchey rings).

-D