Crankset Deflection Testing

Fairwheel Bikes, a small boutique shop in Tucson, Arizona recently decided to test a bunch of high end cranksets for stiffness readings.

The 12 cranks tested were :

1. Campy Record UT
2. Extralite QRC
3. FSA SLK-Light
4. Kcnc Ktype
5. PMP Micro 2
6. Shimano Dura Ace
7. Sram Red
8. Stronglight Fission
9. Thm Clavicula
10. Tune Fast Foot 6pack
11. Vista Integral
12. Zipp Vuma quad

The testing protocol : Each arm was preloaded with 50lbs. From there another 200 lbs was added and the difference was measured in inches. Each arm was tested twice and an average of those two measurements was taken. A lower number represents a stiffer crank. These were labeled as Deflection-D(Drive side deflection) and Deflection-ND(non-drive side deflection). The amount of of deflection in the chainrings by the loading of each arm was also tested and a stiffness x weight(SxW) measurement was done in the end. This was gained by taking the weight x deflection of drive arm x deflection of non-drive arm. A lower number here represents a higher SxW.





Here are the graphical results for comparisons :


Looking by average deflection (the green bar), SRAM red is the stiffest and the PMP looks to be the worst. But I was more interested in the drive side deflection (red) where Shimano's Dura Ace really excels. Price and performance wise, Shimano is really up there. It was also interesting to see the 1500 dollar THM claviculas not doing as well.

Click this link to visit the original Fairwheel's post on the testing if you want to dig more into details.

Ok, too much tech. Time for a laugh.

Food matters! Hey, no prejudices meant. This tickled, and the theme is pretty true for a lot of immigrants.