16 May 2011

Chain ring aesthetics

For Knicki, my favorite recumbent bike, I want to buy a 160 mm crank because I hope it will stop make my knees hurt. (I've heard that many recumbent riders find cranks shorter than the normal 170 mm more appropriate.) As a style guide note that I already sprayed Knicki's new rims in a beautiful white:
Sprayed rims for Knicki


I just settled on these Sugino XD cranks:

Now I am looking for a matching 110 mm BCD chain ring with preferably 50 teeth (I also consider 48T ones). Generally I was looking for something as transparent as possible to make the bike look light and slim.

Here's a gallery of what I've found. The first one is from Spécialités T.A. and it was just made to fit the Sugino cranks:
This one's not as transparent as possible but the five surfaces would allow to spray or paint some nice white pattern on.

The next one is from Sugino themselves. The right photo shows it with some cranks and a chain guard as used by Dahon. (I will add a chainguard if the chain falls off as often as it does now.)


And there's another Sugino with flattened edges. The right photo shows how it looks on the cranks, although I will have it as a single ring of course (just didn't find a single photo).

What's really unfortunate is that they don't have it in white. I could get a non-colored one and spray it myself, but it seems hard to cover the edges so well, that the result will look clean. (When I sprayed the rims, some of the lacquer ran underneath the covering tape and left lasting squirts.)

Finally, a wacky design from Blackspire (made in Canada, as the shop says) which also leaves space for painting some small motives.
I made this blog entry so I could look at my options a few times a day and dream of them at night and then decide what to get. I also have to take into account that I have found a German dealer for the first and last ones, but not the two Sugino ones. So it also depends how much I want to go out of my way to make my ride beautiful.

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