Torque

On Tuesday, I came up against an unforseen consequence of having 180mm crank arms. In order to take advantage of my inborn "gifts", I upgraded my crankset from 175mm to 180mm (moving from Ultegra to DuraAce along the way). The theory here is that my longer legs and tendency to have slower cadence with greater force behind each stroke will be well suited to longer cranks. A longer radius results in more torque arising from the same force on the pedal....

And that's where it all goes wrong. The freewheel part of the hub on my new wheelsets is aluminum. The supporting body for the cassette only extends through the three largest cogs. This means that the stresses applied to gears 4-10 are passed directly to the hub's rotor, rather than being distributed through the supporting body. The result? Deep etching of the rotor body, and the use of extra force to remove the cassette from the hub.

The combination of longer crank arms and the new wheelset has required me to upgrade to DuraAce for the rear cassette, since the supporting body there is for the first five gears, instead of just the first three. Pretty soon, my entire drive train will be DuraAce!