Short crank experience/experiment

[OreoCookie]

@TRusername

I’m 180cm but have very short legs, 76cm inseam. I went to three well-regarded bike fitters and none of them suggested crank length to me, I ended up replacing my 56cm frame with a 54cm frame because all three fitters said my current frame was too large for me. Guess what, I should’ve just gotten shorter cranks.[/quote]
Depending on arm length, it might still be better for you to ride a smaller frame. I live in Japan and apparently Japanese, on average, have shorter limbs in comparison to caucasians, so many frames are only imported up to size M or even S. I’m 1,78 m with long limbs, and I definitely need 56 cm. If I had shorter limbs, I could have snagged up some nice bikes at very good discounts.

[quote=“TRusername, post:15, topic:67454, full:true”]I’ve been using Rotor’s Aldhu oval chain rings with 155mm cranks for the last 2 years and am very happy with the setup.

I love Rotor cranks for their modularity and the fact that they do offer unusual crank lengths and the like. Plus, the quality is top notch.

@TRusername

4. I get to be a shorter crank apologist to the folks that poke fun at me for running “women-sized cranks”.

Ignore the haters.
Plus, women’s bikes (or smaller bikes) don’t get 155 mm cranks either. I think the smallest crank size I have seen by default was 165 mm, which is what I have on my bike now.

Crank length does give an extra dimension to fitters. My fitter (a former world tour pro team mechanic, so no dummy when it comes to bikes) also initially balked at the idea. I asked him to let me try it. So he just took the crank off a random bike in the show room (a woman’s bike, I think ) and let me try it. That settled it for me, 165 mm it was for my next bike.