I use Shimano cranks on all three of my bikes. I have never read anything that would make me want to give up the DA crank and BB. In order to give it up I would need to be shown an advantage. I doubt there could be a performance advantage for a guy of my modest power. It is hard to believe I can flex those things. I doubt any aero advantage would rise above the noise. So I imagine it would have to be a weight advantage. I haven't seen anything from any of the vendors that convinced me there was even a modest weight advantage to be had, but I keep reading.

I do admit those carbon cranks look cool though, and yes, that does count.

I have an ISIS bb and crankset on a second mountain bike. It was a cheaper alternative to xtr. I don't think the splined bb is worth using without the self extracting feature - so the mid and lower end shimano is not worth considering... M2yCents

Tom,

Speaking of splined bottom brackets (shimano), I was wondering if you still have the other half of the BB you cut for your test machine? I would like to get my hands on a splined BB shaft or used splined BB to do some testing of my own. Any suggestions? I've inquired at the LBS here, but they haven't had to replace any splined ones as of yet.

Thanks

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ShaRRky

TRex,

I have an extra DA spindle I would give you if you covered shipping. Drop me a line at jefajones@yahoo.com if you would like to have it.

I had a bad experience with a Shook ISIS BB in 2000, the threads on the CRMO spindle kept loosening, cranks came off while riding, warrantied the BB, went with Race Face and had 0 problems, that was on my MTB, I'm a big fan of DA now ... from what Ive read Tom, the 2004 10 spd BB/Cranks for DA is even better!!

Although both my road and triathlon bikes have Ultegra BBs, I use a Race Face ISIS BB with Truvativ cranks on my single-speed mountain bike. The cranks loosened slightly after about 30 miles--perhaps I didn't torque them correctly--but seem to be holding fine now. In any case, I have no indication that it was the ISIS that led to the loosening.


David Schoonmaker

I have an ISIS drive with a TruVativ crankset. Haven't ridden enough to get a good idea of the set up, though.

RP