Of course it depends on the BB height as well. When I first started riding at the Alkek Velodrome in Houston circa 1990, I bought from the infamous World Cycles an all chome Yakota track bike with mid-priced SunTour components. But, despite 165 mm cranks, I kept striking the inside pedal on the banking, a couple of times resulting in road rash. At the same time, this never happened on my "good" track bike, a custom built Romic with 165 mm Zeus pista cranks, from Houston builder Ray Gasorowski. Finally got around to measuring the Yakota BB height and comparing to the Romic. The Yakota was significantly lower than the Romic, and in fact about the same as most of my road bikes. Evidently, the Yakota was essentially a road frame design that had been fitted with track ends. I promptly transferred the Yakota components to a proper used track frame I had bought, this time being sure to check the BB height. My frequency of road rash fell drastically.
At that time Alkek also rented out Schwinn Madisons, which were mid-priced track bikes. Never rented them myself, having a couple of track bikes of my own, but I was told these had low BB's by track standards, though probably not as bad as the Yakota. If true, this was rather strange, since Schwinn obviously knew what they were doing in regard to track equipment and had proper track geometry on the Paramount pista.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Big Spring, TX
Fred Rednor <fred_rednor@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >i'd like to trade my 165mm campy pista cranks (record)
> >for some 170mm. I'll consider 167.5mm too.
>
> I was under the impression that 165mm was the correct length
> for pista
> (track) cranks so as not to ground the outside pedal on the
> bankings, no
> matter how big the rider (but I've been wrong before).
>
> Back when I started riding and noticing these things (early
> 1950s) I
> thought all cranks were 6.5" (165mm) but never really paid
> that much
> attention. When I resumed serious riding, my 1978 Nishiki
> came with 165mm
> Apex cranks and I thought that might be appropriate for a 21"
> frame. I
> later upgraded to a Shimano 600 crankset which was 170mm,
> which was the
> most common size, but I didn't notice any difference. There
> was always a
> lot of discussion over crank lengths in Bicycling magazine,
> but no real
> agreement. The only conclusion I could draw was that longer
> cranks were for
> larger people.
>
> Anybody have any wisdom on this pertaining to bikes and
> riding styles over
> the years?
John, I think that for pure match sprinting, people generally always used - and continue to use - the 165mm (6.5") cranksets. It's worth noting though, that under the "right" circumstances, you can still have the outside pedal strike the banking. [Parenthetically speaking, I did this last year on the velodrome near Dallas - i.e. Frisco Superdrome - and the gritty surface abraded my tights, shorts, gloves and knuckles... I imagine the London, Ontario 'drome could also pose the possibility of pedal strike, even with 165s.] It seems to me that - after the mid-1970s - people started using the longer cranks for pursuits and time trail events; i.e. those events where you're generally going a constant speed, staying low in the bankings and staying perpendicular to the track surface. I imagine that on a track with shallow bankings - e.g. a place like Kissena Park in NYC, Hern Hill in London or Penrose Park in St. Louis - you could use 170mm cranks in the Points Race. Anyway, that's how it seems to me... cheers, Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia (USA)