Hurricane Dan
Boom chika wow wow...
Posts: 296
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So I picked up a Rotor Crankset (road double) from this guy in Grapevine for $400 with two sets of sprockets, a 50/36 and a 53/39. Everything I read said installing these things was difficult and something that should be performed by a trained professional. Turns out they are very easy to install, it's just interpreting the monkey scribble instructions that's difficult. I spoke with the distributor once. Turns out to be a guy in his garage in Colorado Springs. Nice guy though, and very helpful. Mine came with steel and porcelain spider bearings. The porcelain were installed already so I left it alone. I installed the crankset in about 20 minutes Sunday night. Yesterday (Monday) I went for a ride and found myself cursing all creation for buying these things. I was 2 mph slower, I couldn't spin, I was getting cramps along my inner thighs and found myself mashing my way home. Tonight I went for another ride and tried to be a bit more objective. The first thing I noticed was the trouble I had spinning was coming from the muscle strain that was causing the beginnings of cramps in my thighs due to the pedals being way too close together. When I got home, I measured my old cranks and the Rotors are just over an inch closer together. Big difference. I also have to factor in that these cranks are 172.5s and my old ones were 170s. I wouldn't have ordered 172.5s myself but it was a package deal. My average went back up about 1 mph tonight. Part of that was better spinning. I think I'm already getting used to the different pedal stroke. I'm going to have to pick up some pedal extenders before I kill my knees though. They started aching tonight. In my opinion, you can definitely feel the mechanical advantage when taking off from a dead stop or mashing, but I'll have to wait until I have the extenders and can spin better with them before making a final judgment. Right now, I'm still in the hole, speed-wise. And that's not good.
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