On Mon, 28 May 2007 09:35:02 -0500, Tim McNamara
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>In article <[email protected]>,
> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On May 27, 2:12 pm, Ride Faster <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > I had the same experience with PowerCranks. This product is
>> > garbage.
>>
>> It's really outrageous for them Powercrank to charge so much for a
>> faulty design.
>
>The proprietor of PowerCranks used to post here to rebut criticisms, but
>I haven't seen anything from him for a while. Basically I suspect that
>the price is high because (1) he promises that his product will make you
>faster for which competitive people will pay lots of money and (2) his
>business is small enough that he doesn't get much by way of economies of
>scale to bring his production costs down.
That is likely true.
Plus, the "design flaw" is specifically addressed in the instruction
manual. Maybe the O.P. didn't read it thoroughly - I didn't and had
my non-drive side crank arm come off during a ride early this spring.
Since I also lost the oversized crank bolt, I called the company to
order a new bolt and ask what was up. The owner personally returned
my call left on voice mail, and asked if I has used lock tite on the
bolt when I installed it. Uh, no, I replied (lock tite on a crank
bolt?). It's in the manual he replied: they do tend to vibrate off,
so we recommend blue lock tite (or similar non permanent thread
adhesive) . Plus, he also suggested this: remove the crank bolt
from your old cranks, which is used when the Powercrank is first
installed; this allows the Powercrank bolt a few extra turns for
tightness. So I followed those instructions and have had no further
issues.
About the product: the cranks ARE hugely expensive (the above
explanation makes sense to me), but they are uniquely beneficial in
terms of building leg strength and "muscle memory". You are moving
the mass of the bike and rider one leg at a time, so you must pedal in
the proverbial circle, and you must use muscles you don't normally use
to accomplish that feat. They are so hard on the legs that the first
time most people try them (I definitely recommend on a trainer), you
don't last more than 5 minutes before pain and fatigue ends your ride.
You slowly build up endurance and learn to equalize your leg speed and
timing so that you can pedal "normally", and then you can take them on
the road.
I found that spinning at higher cadences was more painful than big
gears at low cadence. Climbing a steep hill slowly hurt LESS than flat
tempo with a cadence above even 80 rpm (on these puppies, even a
molasses like 70 rpm is a ***** ). To be honest, now that the season
is in full swing I haven't been using them much, and that contradicts
the manual. It would take a long, painful effort to adjust to high
cadences. Maybe next year
Even with the curtailed training, there is no question that my pedal
stroke improved after many trainer miles over the winter and spring: I
can get the "feel" of a rounder stroke. And, no question that my
climbing was better early season as well.
So I'm keeping mine and will be interested to see how far I get on
them next season.
If anybody is interested in them and saving (a bit of) money, there
are always 3 or 4 for sale on e-bay. People seem to either really
like them or really hate them.