Nate998

Hello! I am planning on changing the crankset on my vintage build since they've seen better days and I am no fan of internal bearings. (I would be if I could change the chainrings) So I'm looking for some silver crankset for external BB (GXP, Ultra Torque, HollowTech II) but the crankset HAS to be silver. I wouldn't put Campagnolo on it because it's a full Shimano bike (almost) but I don't know how will it look with modern Shimano 4 arms design.
If there's no other option, I'm completely happy with a Shimano 105 5800 silver crankset but I also feel the need to have more options until I have the money to buy one.
Any ideas?

noobinsf 

How about the Shimano 5750 crankset? It's a similar look to the 5800, but it's a five-bolt design, and the chainrings have a visible design like more classic cranks, and it's available in silver. I'm not that familiar with non-square-taper cranks (the 5750 is Hollowtech II), so that's the only one I can think of.

jimmuller 

I keep thinkin' "I want to put a modern engine in my VW Beetle but it has to be an air-cooled flat-4." I think I'm missing something.

There are some great new square-taper cranks available, and cartridge bearing BB sets are cheap and easy to install. Personally I like loose bearings but if you want something different there are easy options.

mstateglfr 

When you say internal bearings- do you only mean cup and cone style where everything is separate, or do you also dislike cartridge style square taper bottom brackets too?

I can understand disliking cup and cone because the work to set them up isn’t for everyone, but cartridge bottom brackets are really simple to install and service(there is no service).

A cartridge square taper bottom bracket would allow you to use all sorts of silver cranksets with quality chainrings. Old and new- there are really high quality ones available thru the decades.

If you want a silver outboard bearing crankset, Shimano’s 5800 is in silver. Its painted silver vs chrome or polished.
I would probably look at a Shimano CX50 crankset as its 5 arm. It comes with 46 and 36t rings though, so that may be an issue. Of course at the same time, a 46t large ring may mean you can use the small cogs more often, which may be a plus.

bikemig 

Concur with the others, a cartridge BB is easy to install and deal with and gives you the best range of really great choices when it comes to cranksets suitable for a vintage bike. There are some great modern cranksets that will look good and give you potentially better gear ratios available from Sugino, IRD, Velo Orange, etc.

John E

As long as it has 3 or 5 bolts and is (preferably) silver in color, a newer crank should look and function just fine on an older frame. (I hate the way today's 4-bolt spiders look, particularly in black.)

malcala622

Youll need a BBR60 hollowtech bottom bracket and depending on ypur bb shell width its 68 English or 70 italian.

I recommend the BBR60 because its ultegra grade and just under $16. Dura Ace jumps to near $50 and if your BB is italian its a bit difficult to find.

Nate998

I prefer outboard bearings because their easier to service, IMO. I also prefer the cup-and-cone square tapered bottom bracket since it doesn't have the same weight as a brick does but I cannot afford buying the necessary tools. Vintage cranks look amazing to me, they're really elegant but a NOS Dura Ace costs too much. Also, I forgot to mention that this frame was spaced to 130 mm so I'm using a 10 speed cassette back there. My current crankset is for 7 speed and pretty much everytime when I shift from the outer to the inner ring, the chain gets stuck between the chainrings. This could be solved with indexed shifting, I think but this bike is for friction stuff only.

ryansu

Not sure this applies to the question but For a Vintage look the Rivendell Silver, the Velo Orange Grand Cru an most Sugino Cranksets (XD600 etc) fit the bill. All work with square taper so you can go old school loose bearing or newer school sealed BB and yes you can swap chain rings on them

Rocket-Sauce 

Not too modern, but maybe the first gen Sram Rival?

noglider 

!!

Cartridge bearings are convenienter, but old fashioned BBs are durabler.

TenGrainBread 

Good-looking, silver, external BB cranks are just expensive. No way around it.

The best looking external BB cranksets are White Industries M30 or Middleburn X-Type. The Shimano and Campy cranks are silver but the shape of them is bleh.

Some of the high end tubular chromoly or aluminum BMX cranksets from the likes of Profile Racing, Bullseye, Redline, etc... also look great in chrome or polished aluminum. They are also expensive.

I would just put a sealed bearing square taper BB in there. I've never had to do any maintenance on my sealed square taper units, even the run of the mill Shimano UN-55s. Look for a lightly used Dura Ace 7400 or Ultegra/600 crankset on ebay. $25-80 usually.

TenGrainBread 

Also, you said you can't afford the tools to install a square taper crank. Then how are you going to afford the tools to install a Hollowtech II crank? Or uninstall your old square taper? Confused.

ryansu

OP it occurs to me that when you say you would use the stock crank if you could replace the chain rings maybe you mean if you could go smaller on the inner ring that 38t..:? i.e. create a compact crank like a 48/34? You can accomplish that with a vintage mtb crank, readily available at most Bike Co-ops, and remove the rings and the replace the middle and small rings with the 48/34 combo and if you want put a bash guard where the big ring was. Did that on a 79 Miyata 912, you might need to replace a derailleur but most likely not YMMV

dddd

I prefer the square-taper cartridge BB's because they are cheap, are usually lighter than cup/cone, work with traditonal cranksets, and give me the option of narrowing the chainline to better suit my "all day in the big ring" style of riding.
Even the modest UN55 cartridge bb is lighter than most older C/C bb's, and bb maintenance is time-consuming, so the cartridge is a no-brainer for me.

As far as a narrow chain slipping between rings on an older crankset, I fix this by removing the small ring and bending each tooth out toward the big ring using an adjustable wrench.
Further fine-tuning (of which side of the teeth that the chain sideplates prefer to fall on) can be done by beveling the teeth in situ, rotating the crankset with a long flat file held at an angle against the inner side of the small ring's teeth. I do this all the time as as a fine-tuning process, after testing the bike under the challenging frequent-shifting conditions of spirited rides through the local foothills.

Nate998

I already have the hollowtech II tool. I'm using SRAM on my other bike and since the tools are the same I have no problem with it. The GXP tools was expensive considering the fact that I barely used it. I have SRAM on my other road bike.
What about the spacing between the chainrings? I am using 10 cogs in the back and 7 speed double crankset up front. As said before, the chain gets between the chainrings a lot, so a 10/11 speed crankset would be much appreciated.

Nate998

I'm not going to alter the chainrings )) I prefer doing thing the right way

bikemig 

There are square taper cranks designed to work with 10 on the back (e.g., IRD, Velo Orange). For a modern "silver" crank with outboard bearings, Sugino makes some really interesting ones but they're not cheap:

https://alexscycle.com/products/sugi...-plus-crankset

https://store.somafab.com/suoxcrarwcu.html

RobbieTunes

I'm sort of in the same boat as the OP, but I am looking for old-school and light.

I've got no problem with a square taper BB, as Omni makes some very light ones. Also, the smoothness of a Campy or DA ball bearing BB is very hard to beat, so I'm OK with those.

I'd love the simplicity of an external BB, but there are few cranks that will look OK with other 5-sp era stuff. V-O and Rivendell may be the situation, but I saw a beautiful crankset on steelbikeguy's Hetchins the other day, and may go that route.

Any suggestions for a light, square taper silver crankset, or a light, external cup crankset that looks compatible with vintage....?

Feldman

Check ebay for silver, square taper Campagnolo cranks. They're considered not old enough for vintage, too old to be cool. They will fit on a generic, inexpensive, durable Asian tapered BB. I have a couple of customers who buy 'em for spare chainrings and don't use the cranks!

Cl904

base2 

Why has nobody mentioned an alkaline bath to blast off the black anodizing? It's easy. It takes about 4 minutes and afterwards a bit of Mothers aluminum/magnesium polish makes a mirror shine.
Do not use oven cleaner! Instead, buy either Red Devil drain cleaner, or preferrably straight food grade sodium hydroxide (lye) from a soap making supplier such as Brambleberry. Mix 3 ounces lye per half gallon water. Soak the part you want to deanodize for 1-3 minutes and rinse clean with hot soapy water & a dish sponge. The important part is to monitor the process and watch for the part to bubble. Make sure you use fresh clean solution.

You can re-anodize it silver or gold if you don't want to polish it, or you can anodize that which you polished by picking up chromium phosphate (hexavalent chromium aka Alodine 600 made by Henkle) at your local boat shop or chemical-supermarket*com). If you polished it, the hardest part is to get it super clean, grease free as the polish also has wax in it that works into the pores of the metal usually. Once you do get a water-break free surface, soak it in Alodine solution for less than 15-30 seconds or less for silver A minute or 2 for gold.

It's easy.

brockd15 

I would (and am on my Davidson) go with a Dura Ace 9000 crankset. Very nice, light, some black but lots of silver....but not cheap. If you want silver in a newer gen Shimano crank, I think it looks 10x better than the silver 5800/7000.

Not my bike, but for reference:

base2 

Here is the XTR crankset on my '74 Schwinn Varsity. In this case, the crankarms were powder-coated so I removed the powder-coating by abrasive means. Same with the painted Ultegra derailleur. In both cases working up to 1200 grit and anodized as described above. The 28-44 chain rings were black and a simple soak in alkaline solution fixed that. I opted not to polish before processing because I like the weather durability of flat grey anodizing.

Like you, the 11 speed chain kept dropping between the rings. Since the 44 tooth was from a triple, that was expected to happen. Simple 1.2mm spacer washers moved the ring in board and solved the issue. 2500 all-weathet miles on this set up and couldn't be happier.

Salamandrine 

My suggestion is the current issue Sugino Mighty Tour 901D. It's possibly the best square taper crank ever made. Not cheap though.



Sugino also makes an external cup modern crank called the OX601D. It's modern looking, but at least it's silver.
Sugino modern cranks at SOMA

I'm not willing to concede that external cup BBs are superior. The main point AFAIK is to allow the use of a large hollow spindle. Saves a bit of weight, and marginally stiffer. BB spindle flex is pretty trivial though, IMO, compared to frame and even crank arm flex.

I really do love the look of the Herse reissue cranks, but I'm certain I would break it. Another beautiful modern crank is the current TA Carmina. Also silly money, but it's pretty and very adaptable.