The bike is crazy-good.

He info they gave you is incorrect, though. The Ultralight's minimal paint job saves 60g (max) vs the standard Tarmac.

There are other reasons the new (complete) bike dropped weight, but i's not 1.5# of paint.

CLX50 more squirrelly than CLX64? That is interesting. The CLX50s are not quite as deep and not quite as aero.

Squirrelly-ness (assuming you mean affected by gusts) has more to do with where the wheel stalls than anything else.

I haven't had the same experience as you. Both wheels are fine for me (I have 10s of 1000s of miles on 404s), and I would not say one has been appreciably easier or harder to handle than the other.

Keep in mind this is very subjective because it is "feel". But the 50s seemed to have been a little more unpredictable vs. the 64s in gusts. 64s seem to have this "gentle pressure" feeling and the 50s seemed to snap a bit more with the gusts. I have a friend who has mentioned the same thing when riding a newer set of semi-deep rims similar to the 50s. All anecdote but that is just my experience.

They do roll quite fast though. There were times I was impressed at the speeds I was hitting with cross/head winds the other day.

i'm really short, like 5'2", but have always run 170mm cranks because that's just what came on my bike. but i'm starting to think I'd be better suited to 165s. i'm going to try borrow a crank for the fall and seeing if i like it.

related - if i make the jump i'll need a new pwoermeter. don't really have funds for a quarq. does anyone have experience with the pioneer single leg meter?

I did some reading on shorter cranks, and it seems like the range of 165-175 is silly small for the range of people. Shorter than 165 is pretty boutique and you won't get a PM for it however. Heck, even 165 cranks fetch high prices.

That being said, I also read that moving your cleats around would make more of a difference than a change in crank length (so I moved the cleats back and kept the 172.5s).

We have 2 Pioneer 6800 left side meters and can't complain. No crazy spikes in power (definitely get a cadence spike almost every ride) and it seems reliable. If you display instantaneous power you can tell it just updates every left stroke and if you were used to a dual sided before you might be miffed if you were staring at it during some really hard intervals. Obviously an edge case.

oh yeah, i think we've talked about this. I ride a stages now and use 3s smoothing anyway so am totally fine with the pros/cons of one sided power. i would get another stages but I can get the pioneer slightly cheaper and also hoping it doesn't suffer the same data dropout issues as stages. they're relatively intermittent for me, but annoying nonetheless.

Rotor makes really short crank arms - all the way down to 150 or 155, if I remember correctly. And you can put Rotor arms on SRMs - pricey I know, but I've seen used ones going for $800. (In fact, there is a 170 Rotor SRM on Online Swap Meet this morning.)

I also saw a DA 165 SRM on either Slowtwitch recently.

You can also get a Quarq in those sizes, and if you don't like the arms, just swap them out for longer ones.

Yeah I thought about the quarq option but I'm seriously trying to do this as cheaply as possible. I've been using a stages and it's fine for my purposes.

I remember the stages data dropouts. Pioneer has none of that.

I remember stages telling me I was hitting 2200 Watts. That was fun.

I have some 165s I'll send to you if you go that way from a failed tt short-crank trial

shimano? i have a PF BB so changing BBs is a massive pain.

they're "quarq" branded alu I think, I forget what bolt pattern they have but will look.

wait i'm confused is it a powermeter or a quarq branded non-PM crank? didn't even think those existed. anyway, I appreciate the offer!

you can get quarqs with quarq-branded cranks. I think they are shimano, but again, uncertain. When I went back to 175 I didn't want to pull the thing apart to check the bolt pattern so I just send quarq the serial number and had them send me the right cranks.

Mikey I want to see you on 180's. It's nothing personal, it'd just be hilarious.

The Quarq stuff will either be BB30 or GXP.

Power2Max Sale:
FSA Gossamer 165mm $600
Rotor 3D+ $800

I'm 99% sure I'll be giving this a try in the off season so I should probably jump on this sale now. I just can't decide which to go for

i want a lot of things in life but FSA chainrings aren't one of them

The Power2Max NG ECO spider for SRAM cranks will be around $490 when they come out in September.
BYO Cranks/Rings.

P2M comes with Praxis Works rings.
And what's wrong with FSA rings? I haven't noticed anything wrong with them.

how many races do you win? 'nough said!

I will admit that while I am a whole-hearted lover of aero (aero bikes, aero wheels, aero helmet, etc.) the new Tarmac is kind of tugging at my heart strings...Can I tell myself that since it is supposedly kind of aero it is okay for me to want it?

no

Yes!