I have a Shimano Dura Ace 7900 crankset that I want to put on a bike that has SRAM Force. It looks like the Shimano line is that I would need to put a 7900 front derailleur and chain on the bike for everything to function properly. Will I create a tear in the space time continuum if I fail to do this when I install the crank? Something worse perhaps?
That 7900 crank will make any SRAM groupset awesome. It’ll work fine. You will probably have to adjust the FD just a bit. Also, you can use pretty much any FD (as long as it’s 10-speed) from any mfg.
The deraileur can’t ‘see’ the crank - it just guides the chain onto the chainring. Are you switching chainrings too?
Either way - all chainrings with the same number of teeth are the same size, so adjusting the FD up or down won’t be necessary (it may be if you switch the size of the ring you use). As for in/out - maybe, it depends on the specific cranks. Just swap them, then test the shifting. The difference won’t be more than you can easily adjust by rotating barrel adjusters.
As for the chain - there’s no real difference between SRAM and Shimano chains. They’re interchangeable.
tl;dr: swapping the crank is just that - no other changes necessary to the drivetrain. Perhaps someone else can verify if the BBs are the same though - that I don’t know about.
The bottom brackets are not the same.
The bottom brackets are not the same.
Thanks for verifying that, I didn’t think they were. With that said, the cranks I’ve bought in the past have come with the correct brackets.