Originally Posted by
bulgie
I don't think that's true, because both of my 180 mm sets have all the indications of being cold-forged.
I remember being disappointed when the cheaper-looking ones came out, a few years after the originals. I can't prove the cheaper-looking ones are "melt-forged" (cast) but they look that way to me. Even if the later one are just as good functionally (I don't know), they don't appeal to me visually. But then again, the older ones, the kind I like, are the ones that cracked... I don't know if the later ones had that problem, wouldn't have seen it personally since I never used those. Anyone seen instances of cracking in the later, cheaper-looking ones? Maybe the changes they made were specifically to address the known cracking problem, and those are the ones we should be seeking out!
Mark B
Mark, I agree the later “melt forged/cast” doesn’t do it for me style wise and mine has the same cracks as the 110 and 144 cold forged original version. I tried to capture the cracks in the 110 versions, but I made the mistake of cleaning the area of the crack with mineral spirits which makes it harder to see the cracks. The melt forged/cast one has larger cracks from what I can tell. I think this is a design flaw of a very tight “V” transition. All my flag cranks were purchased used or I pulled them off donor bikes; I haven’t ridden them so cannot say if the cracks will get worse or if filing is a good solution or not. I included a pic of my go to crank, the pedestrian Sugino AT. I never heard of spider crank in the AT. The transition is more round and uses a bigger gap. I also like the very plain old Deore XT 110 crank, but not on a nice road bike.
Crack in melt forged/cast version
Crack in cold forged version
Venerable Sugino AT crank, no crack, better transition design?