Short TT CT cranks. Where to buy?

fat bloke

I'd like to try shorter cranks on a TT bike. Where would you get em? I've only ever used 172.5 sort of by default really but are shorter cranks, like say 165 for example, a specialist purchase or are they readily purchasable in the usual shimano/sram etc flavours?

Beasty

165mm should be generally available

eg here and here

fat bloke

Beasty wrote: »

165mm should be generally available

eg here and here

Cheers Beasty. What's your take on it yourself. TT guru that you are
Any experience with shorter cranks? Opens up a lot of other questions like, do you leave saddle height as is or move saddle up to compensate?
Interesting stuff on the web about it facilitating breathing cos your knees aren't hitting your ribs, and facilitating hip movement too. Basically a great way to make the TT tuck easier for pot bellied inflexible vertebrates such as myself

Beasty

Use 175mm on all the road bikes. However 165mm is standard on track bikes, and TBH I can't really tell the difference!! A lot of people say they can notice a 2.5mm difference though.

I have moved to 170mm on track bikes, but that's simply to get more leverage for starting the pursuit when on fixed gear.

Having said that I am quite tall (186cm) which generally means I am probably more suited to slightly longer cranks

However for TT/pursuit I'm not sure of all the dynamics. Track sprinters seem to like shorter cranks, but they can be spinning at getting on for 200rpm. I'm not sure about endurance racers. With pursuit/TT you try to maintain a steady state and I guess it's really down to what you find works best.

Beasty

On the saddle point, if you shorten the cranks by 2.5/5mm you should raise the saddle by the same amount

Oryx

I moved from 175mm to 170mm on my tt bike on the advice of a fitter. Raised the seat to compensate. The difference wasnt huge. I was a bit smoother on it if anything..