Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Disposable Crankset

A coworker of mine recently purchased a Giant townie bike for getting a little fitness riding in. He decided that he needed longer cranks. Taking into account his bottom bracket type and current chainring configuration, I recommended these from the QBP catalog:


They arrived over the weekend and we installed them today.

Totally offensive. The chainrings are riveted onto the crank arm. For that matter, so were the nameless ones that came with the bike. That means, if any one chain ring becomes bent or worn, the whole right crank assembly must be replaced. How much more effort would it be to throw fasteners instead of rivets in there?

4 comments:

Tim said...

Effort? Probably not a huge amount... Cost? I'd say an extra $9.80 :-)

-p said...

Well said, but what the hell is that crazy little plastic bit?

The Shed Master said...

This isn't a new thing - alot of cheapie cranks have had non-replaceable rings for at least 40 years.

The little plastic bit is an aid for aligning the front derailleur on OEM setups. It usually isn't there on the consumer version.

-p said...

Thanks for the info Shed Master. Such a little plastic bit would be a useful thing to have in a toolbox if you could snap it onto the big ring of any crankset and adjust the derailer cage until it was just right.