Originally Posted by
Campag4life
Its OK to disagree. Keep in mind, designs are meant for everybody and not just a few. Tom Boonen and Thor put a lot more pressure on cranks than you and me. I was explaining the design has evolved away from a taper with increased surface area for good reason. There are guys on this forum that believe steel is the best frame material as well.
As to the chain line comment, that wasn't mine. You won't see it in my posts as I didn't make it. I agree with you that chainline doesn't matter 'much'...but perhaps fractionally. The reason is...running cross chained with wider cassette on big chainring and smaller cogs while ill advised for best chainline, places a further moment on the chainring trying to dislodge its seat. Running straighter chainlines on narrower freehubs of years past, didn't exert the same leverage laterally the chain ring...sine of the angle. This is more critical on square taper cranks because the spider is separate from the spindle. Perhaps the best design evolution as I stated previously is crank spiders in the industry are now integrated with the crank spindle...a major advancement in crank design.
When you speak of sheer power there are no riders with more over all torque power being applied to cranks then track racers, and those people for years used square taper without issues. In fact NJS approved cranks, (according to this site) only use the square taper BB's to this very day for elite Keirin racing!
http://www.tracksupermarket.com/inde...age=page&id=12 Power of a track racer is so great that for years they still used double toe straps because clipless pedals were not strong enough to hold their feet onto the pedals, it's only been in the last 5 years or so that there are few pedals strong enough. Here is a store that sells bottom brackets for track racing, all but one is a square taper design:
http://www.tracksupermarket.com/inde...index&cPath=67
When I use to race I wasn't an average cyclist just having fun, I managed to get to the CAT3 level, not the greatest of course, but higher then just an average cyclist, and mountain racing required a lot of torque and I never saw a bottom bracket break in a race. I do remember that the low to mid lever bottom brackets were flexy, that's why I went with the Superbe BB.
I think today there are too many BB standards which blurs the lines at to which is the best. Back in the day of square taper it wasn't a big deal to use a Campy BB with a Shimano system as long as the axle length was good.
Again, please don't take this as an attack against you, it's just a series of comments that would be interesting to find answers for. I just don't think that the square taper design was as bad as people think they are today. I personally think we have a majority of young riders who have never experienced square taper BB's and since that stuff is mostly out of sight and out of mind replaced by splined cranks then the old school square taper design must have been a poor design, I'm saying that simply is not true having lived and raced in that era, not saying either that square taper is superior to splined, just saying it's not all that inferior if at all.