Crankset
Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think you want to race as fast as you can on your bike. To move forward you need an important part. Namely: the crankset, also named your pedals. There are cheap, good, bad, fast rusting pedals. But wich ones do you need to improve your biking skills to the highest level.
Crankset
The crankset is the connection between the bottom bracket and the pedals and it consists of one or more gears and a crankarm. You can also see it as a lever with an internal thread used for a confirmation of the pedal at the end. The crank is equipped with a round hole. This is at right angles on the longitudinal of the crank. By putting a crankspie through the hole, the crank will be connected to the bottom bracket (the hole where the crankspie goes). In this day and age all bikes are equipped without a crankspie in the crankset, because it is very tough to mount and dismount. The chainrings will be mounted onto the right side. There are three types of cranksets: double, compact and triple.
Compact (50x34 or 52x36)
This is most common and used crankset. That results in a large set of offers to choose from and also the price ranges may differ. The compact crankset is settled between the double and triple and therefore it’s also called ‘best of both worlds’. This one is provided with two gears. The little gear (and the large one at sometimes) is just a little smaller than with the double crankset. That means tat u can pick a perfectly light acceleration. This kind of crankset is most suitable for mountain and hill area’s.
Double (53x39 or 52x42)
The double crankset is just like the compact crankset equipped with two gears. These gears are compared to the compact and triple cranksets the biggest. Because of that you would need to pedal a lot harder when biking in the mountains or with a strong headwind. To take the benefit out of it your crankset requires a lot of power. This crankset is most used by professionals and competitive riders who can reach a force of 1600 watt. While for the average cyclist that force is 800 watt.
Triple
The smallest chainring is smaller than the smallest chainring from the compact and double crankset. This ensures you to choose for an even lighter acceleration. This type of crankset has emerged from the mountainbikeworld, because in most cases mountainbiking requires light acceleration. So for cyclists who tour a lot in the mountain and hill areas this is a good option to choose.
Quality
The crankset is part of the switching group. With switching you can choose from two brands that are most bought and also extended their offers: Shimano and SRAM. From Shimano there are more cheaper cranksets. If you want to buy a bit more cheaper crankset you need to be with Shimano (between €399 and €1799). Thereafter you will find a medium price range for cranksets (between €999 and €4999). The most expensive cranksets are most common used by professionals and consist of a price range between €1999 and €9999. I would recommend the Shimano models.
Material
Simple cranks are made of steal, while more luxurious cranks consist out of aluminium. The best ones are made from cold forged aluminium. Those are lighter and have a small ‘low profile’-form. Despite the fact that the aluminium cranks are more luxurious, they will break faster than steal ones. The steal ones are able to bend back more easily, but afterwards they could get the chance to break themselves and can cause a crash.
I hope you learned something about cranksets and will find something that fits your bike so you can enjoy your ride much more. Beside this one I’ve made a couple of other blogs of which I think are worth reading. They’re about topics that will influence your bike experience and for that reason it is very interesting to read about.
