7/20/14 2:59 AM

I've always liked Sugino cranks, having used many pairs over the years - in addition to those actually branded Sugino, I have several pairs pf Suntour and Ritchey cranks that are actually badge-engineered Sugino. Anyway, I recently needed to buy my wife a new pair of cranks, to replace an old pair of TA Cyclotouriste cranks whose left pedal thread got damaged in a prang. After searching around, I bought a pair of Sugino OX801D, which were one of the very few cranks available in 160mm length (as were the TA), and which also had a fairly narrow Q-factor of 145mm. They also have the two chainrings mounted at different bolt circles, with the outer using 110BCD and the inner 74BCD, so you can run anything from a fairly standard 50-36 compact combination to an ultra-compact 40-24 - the cranks are actually offered with over a dozen different chainring combinations, and I bought this pair with 44-30 chainrings.

The only real downside was the price, though I suppose that $350 isn't particularly expensive for a top quality set of cranks these days, and these ones are forged and very nicely finished.

7/20/14 10:12 AM

It's cool how you can't see that the small ring is mounted on a smaller BCD.

I've been finding the old Mity-Tour cranksets ever harder to source in good condition, they were the Nuovo Record-patterned 110mm cranks from the 1970's that used the ISO/Campy-style taper instead of JIS dimensions.
Nick, you've posted pic's of the Sugino (PX-series?) cranks before, how do these compare?

I stepped up my game last year to keeping my familiar pace while using but five cogs in back, and found this not so difficult given that the bike came with a wide-ranging 52-36t double, which allowed me to use a "tight" 13-24t freewheel to get 7 sequential ratios by double-shifting (back-shifting the rear derailer one step whenever I made the big "double-shift" in front.
These sort of chainring combinations and shifting shenanigans add an aspect of entertainment to the ride that serves to pleasantly distract one from a good level of over-exertion.

It would have been nice if Sugino had designed in the ability to alter the "chainline" dimension of the installed crankset by making the spline engagement laterally adjustable. I assume that these are designed specifically for 130mm-width dropout spacing.

Last edited by dddd on 7/20/14 10:18 AM; edited 2 times in total

7/20/14 10:14 AM

Agree Sugino, the upper end are all Forged and always stiff enough.

Still have XP Pro 110 set and the Tandem Specialized set is obviously Sugino as well.

Those are pretty to my eyes in a updated traditional way to be sure.

Gearing wise, and semi similarly geared... I ran a LX MTN crank on my Strong for 6-7 years. It was a non Compact Hollow tech II. I forget what the granny I pulled was, but left the 36 and 48. Which with a 12-27 worked great. When I was going to climb hills I would pop on a wheel with a 30 tooth steel cog put on the end with the spacer from the removed single cog from the middle-ish. ;)

With the Breezer dropout on that frame, any short cage derailleur worked well. Without even a B screw reversal.

Last edited by Sparky on 7/20/14 10:28 AM; edited 1 time in total

7/20/14 10:25 AM

Yeah, Sugino has sort of been the "Ashtabula" of Japan, supplying cranks, stems and seat posts to other makers using their huge forging equipment.

The Ashtabula forge (in Wisconsin) made cold-forged steel forks, cranks and stems for Schwinn and others.

7/20/14 9:31 PM

I think that these cranks are a bit more nicely finished than the PX. The PX cranks have more of a brushed finish, whereas these are more highly polished. These cranks have the standard road chainline of 43.5mm - though I've found that works perfectly well with the wider 135mm rear spaced frames and hubs. In fact, on bikes that I'm not racing, I prefer to have the chainrings slightly inboard of being perfectly centred on the cassette, as I'm spending a lot more time on the lower cogs of the cassette than on the smallest couple of cogs, so I might as well have a better chainline for where the chain is running most of the time, at the expense of a worse chainline for gears that are only rarely used.

7/22/14 9:19 AM

Veerrryyyyy nice.

7/22/14 10:11 AM

I still prefer the look of the PX (he said, having installed them only last month) but these are very shiny indeed!

7/22/14 3:24 PM

super-mighty if'n you look hard enough! ;-)

LOVE those modern suginos...$350 aint bad for top-end tackle like that...a real alternative to campy now that they stopped making alloy UT cranksets.

7/22/14 4:32 PM

Real Specialities TA rings, too!

7/23/14 8:22 AM

I had a set of those Super Mighty's on my Cannondale years ago after one of the Campagnolo cranks cracked, as the old Record cranks were wont to. They were pretty nice, and took the Campy rings. Not quite as finely finished, but they also did not break.

7/23/14 8:24 AM

I also had the Cado, but MTN set. Nice design and stiff MOFOs. Like, as that say. Expensive though...