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Ignore the staggering price of the new Zipp VumaQuad cranks for one moment. Never one to do it by the book, Zipp has designed the VumaQuads around the new 30mm bottom bracket standard – basically an upsizing of the crank's spindle and associated bearings.Weight is impressively low. The chainrings use single bolts that screw directly into the threaded spider – little touches like this shave off those grams. We tested the 39/53-tooth version with 172.5mm crank lengths, which weigh in at a feathery 607g.With a combination of the four arms, compact spider and big 53T ring, we had initial concerns about chainring flexibility. We had no noticeable flex or front mech rub though – only power sprinters might get the rings to flex. The cranks felt incredibly solid and purposeful. The stiffness and power transfer, combined with the low weight, does feel special.The all-carbon crank arms are beautifully finished, although if you pedal 'heels-in' you will scuff the finish on the raised centre bulge. Installation is a doddle – all you need is the supplied external bottom bracket tools and a 10mm Allen key. Removal is just as easy and the cranks feature a self-extracting bolt. Considering the high price, we'd advise getting a shop to fit them for you.As for that price, if you're the sort of person to query it then the VumaQuads probably aren't for you. They don't even come with a bottom bracket. The standard 10-steel-balled bottom bracket tested here costs £100, the ceramic upgrade £175. So who's going to buy them? Posers and those who can afford the performance advantage. Judging by the pre-orders, there are plenty of you out there.
One of the lightest, stiffest cranks available – at a price
The cold-forged aluminium alloy Dura-Ace crankset comes with a new hollowed out chainring. The chainring bolts slot through the inner chainring and screw directly through the spider and into the outer chainring. Shimano claim this design is 20 percent stiffer than any of their previous cranks.The tooth profiles on the chainrings have been redesigned to reduce wear and improve efficiency, not only when shifting, but also when transferring power from the chainring to the chain.The bottom bracket has stainless steel bearing units as usual, but with new seals with less drag than previous versions. The chainset weighs in at 739g, including bearings.On the road this is one of the stiffest feeling cranksets we've ever ridden. Only Cannondale's Hollowgram SI system and the THM Clavicula cranks are comparable in terms of how stiff they feel when pedalling.
One of the stiffest chainsets we've ever ridden
The hollow forged alloy crank (after flirting with carbon, Shimano Dura-Ace cranks are now fully alloy again) is matched up with a hollow outer chainring to produce a crankset that's a tad (15g) lighter than before. It's also said to be 20% stiffer although, in use, you'll do well to notice. Even if you're a big rider pushing a big gear, the difference is tiny - but, hey, everything helps so we're not going to argue. If you really want to get out your anorak and magnifying glass, you can take a look at the slightly altered tooth shape which is designed to give better contact and power transfer. The crankset comes in a whole range of chainring size options including, for the first time, a 50-34T compact design for a lower set of gear ratios.
Lighter and stiffer than ever with a compact option adding to the appeal
Fulcrum is a division of Campagnolo, and the range-heading Racing Torq RRS bears a close resemblance to the Campagnolo Record crankset, but with a subtly different moulding shape to the spider.The stiff hollow crank arms use unidirectional and multidirectional carbon fibre for strength and lightness, and the same smooth-running hybrid ceramic bearings (ceramic balls and steel race) used in the Record cranks.The chainrings have an aluminium oxide 'Hard-OX' layer (also used in cutting tools) which has a slippery surface that helps the chain shift from small to large rings. It also cuts down on noise.
The best value carbon chainset package we've tested
Off-the-peg fixed-wheel bikes usually come with fairly decent but unexciting square-taper chainsets. This Miche Pista (Track) chainset is a step higher up the ladder - and it certainly looks the part.It's square taper too, so is an easy upgrade. Miche make a matching Primato bottom bracket (£13.99) and it will fit any other 107mm-width ISO square-taper bottom bracket.The anodised aluminium chainring is nice and chunky, in part because it's 1/8in wide, and our sub-11 stone testers couldn't detect any flex in the forged aluminium cranks.The five-arm spider has a bolt circle diameter of 144mm and the Pista's off-the-shelf options are: 165mm cranks with a 48-tooth chainring, 170mm/49T, 172.5mm/50T or 175mm/51T.There's logic in having a bigger chainring with longer cranks, since the longer arm gives more leverage and makes the gear feel about the same. Plus, bigger riders are usually more powerful and are more likely to want a bigger gear.We picked the 165mm/48T option since it still yielded a big enough gear and the shorter crank arms are more 'spinnable' when you're pedalling propellor-legs fast.Aftermarket Primato rings sized 46-53T are available for about £36 each. The whole chainset weighs 613g.
Good value and good looking upgrade for your fixie
Although it's great to look at new and shiny Dura Ace (and Di2) kit, it's always the announcement of the new Ultegra groupsets that generates the most excitement here at road.cc towers. Ultegra has always been the smart choice in the Shimano range: affordable enough to be a serious consideration with first dibs on all that innovation trickling down from the top.Dura Ace 7900 was a fairly big leap in a market that mostly makes incremental changes, and Ultegra 6700 has stepped up a notch too, taking on plenty of the new technology at a price point that's much more within the reach of the keen amateur cyclist.Ultegra now has the hollowglide chainring of Dura Ace. It also shares the internal lever cable routing, the Carbon lever blade, redesigned hood shape and repositioned pivots on lever and brake. In fact there's not much that it doesn't have, really only the no-trim shifting of the front mech. So what's the performance difference between the two groupsets?Hand on heart I'd have to say that blindfolded I'd be very hard pressed to tell the difference between the two. There's no real performance advantage to be had by buying Dura Ace kit over the new Ultegra, not one you'll notice out on the road at least. The new Ultegra kit is excellent: shifts are crisp, braking is noticeably better, power transmission is near faultless.In the end it all comes down to weight: Dura Ace 7900 is about 300g lighter than Ultegra 6700. If you can honestly say you'd notice half a pound more kit hanging from your frame then you need to consider the top-of-the-line groupset. For everyone else, myself very much included, the smart money's with Ultegra. Forget the RRPs for a minute: In the real world 7900 is going to cost you a grand, and 6700 can be had for less than £600. For me it's a no-brainer: if you're a Shimano fan then Ultegra 6700 is definitely the groupset that gives you the most bangs per buck. Here's how we rate the components...The most obvious difference between 6700 and the previous incarnations of Ultegra is that the new groupset shares the Hollowglide chainring technology introduced with last year's Dura Ace. Essentially this means the big ring is made from two sheets sandwiched together, with a void in the middle. Shimano tell us it's lighter and stiffer – isn't everything? – and it also improves the look of the chainset which has very smooth lines. It might not make you go faster, but you will feel a bit faster! Where the Dura Ace chainring uses two Aluminium plates the Ultegra chainset utilises a composite inner plate. We tested the compact 50/34 version, which runs on the now ubiquitous outboard bearings.With Hollowtech II crank arms, a Hollowglide chainset and external bearings you'd expect the 6700 chainset to be stiff, and it is. Really stiff. No amount of jumping on the pedals could persuade the chainset to flex, it's an excellent pedalling platform. In conjunction with the redesigned front mech the shifts between the rings are nice and crisp; shifting up to the big ring particularly is an improvement. Shimano have been fiddling with the spacing between the two rings and they've added an extra millimetre of space between the rings on the doubles. That doesn't sound a lot but it means you get a greater range of gears available in the small ring without having to worry about chain rub. The only possible downside of that extra millimetre is that it means you need to buy a double- or triple-specific STI lever, which makes changing from one to the other a costly job. Best to do some some hard thinking if you're unsure.The chainset is probably the place to talk about the finish, as it's the most obvious component. It's a sort of dark gunmetal grey, and it'd be fair to say that it's divided opinion a bit. My main issue is that the Hollowglide chainring doesn't quite match the spider, more in terms of lustre than actual colour, but some folks just don't like it. I expect they'll come round though, it's a bit different but you could hardly say that the 6700 kit is ugly, far from it.
Ultegra is the new amateur rider's benchmark for performance and price. Almost indistinguishable from Dura Ace in terms of performance, it only loses out on weight – but more than makes up for that in value for money.
Campagnolo, in an example of the Italian company continuing to plough their own furrow, are - at the moment anyway - refusing to go down the BB30 oversized bottom bracket route.They're sticking with their UltraTorque two-piece bottom bracket axle, the ends of which have interlocking teeth.It's stiff and straightforward to install, though we're not convinced that the circlip is needed between the drive-side bottom bracket cup and the crank spider, which is designed to prevent the bottom bracket cup unscrewing.The all-alloy chainset looks great; a version with a carbon spider is also available, 125g lighter but over £100 dearer. The combination of chainset, front mech and chain performed flawlessly, smooth and accurate.
Great looks, good performance, but no lightweight
These Race Face cranks may look like a lot of others out there but beneath the surface they're quite different. For starters they're forged from 6066 aluminium alloy.A much more common alloy for cranks is 6061, but 6066 has a higher fatigue strength - 110 megapascals, compared with 62 MPa for 6061 and 90MPa for 2014 - and it's also 'stiffer', so it's definitely a good choice of material.One other difference is that the chromoly steel axle is a fixed part of the left-hand crank arm, rather than the right-hand. There's no performance benefit or drawback from doing it this way, but it does make the box the cranks come in smaller - with a potential environmental benefit when it comes to transporting them.The Cadence comes complete with a bottom bracket, which had smooth-running bearings out of the box - and they stayed that way too throughout testing, thanks to the high quality of the bearings and the excellent sealing.Shifting performance was good, and we tested this with SRAM, KMC, and Shimano chains; all worked very well and showed little sign of wear. Also included with the crankset is a pair of pedal washers, which help to prevent the pedals from damaging the face of the crank (we suggest running pedal washers on virtually all cranks).Out on the road, these really did feel like a high quality set of cranks. They felt stiff, shifted well, stayed smooth, scuffed very little and the weight of 837g - including bottom bracket - is very reasonable for a set of cranks at this price. All in all, a good-looking, high quality product with a performance to match.
A very good set of cranks at a very competitive price