This should be an interesting thread, given the divergence of opinions out there.
Peter White's recommendation is for crank length to be 18.5% of leg length, which would lead you to the opposite conclusion.
http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/
_________________________________________________ Chris Beyer Volvo Cars of North America, LLC Customer Relations Rockleigh, NJ USA
Telephone: 800.550.5658 E-mail: CBeyer2@volvocars.com
-----Original Message----- From: Sterling [mailto:sterling@tns.net] Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 4:12 PM To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Crank length/Vintage Bicycle Quarterly
Jan Heine made some interesting comments about crank length in Vintage Bicycle Quarterly ( A 400K Brevet ). He commented about the fact that with shorter crank arms you can lower the Bottom bracket height , get a better cornering more stable bike and have the additional advantage of being able to continue pedaling thru the corners without fear of kissing the pavement , not to mention you also save your knees from the stress of longer cranks. I remeber reading somewhere that in the 50's the Randoneurs typically used crank lengths of about 165mm and smaller gear ratios.
I can also recall that this long crank thing has been tried before by the Professional racers again I think it was in the 50's or 60's and they moved back to more knee forgiving lenghts after a few years. What does anyone know about this?
Sterling Peters
San Diego