Anyone using SunXCD Exceed cranks?

[Jack Doran]

They are as beautiful as the venerable TA Cyclotouriste cranks with a low q factor but at half the price. They're also compatible with Specialites rings, which is nice for the sake of gearing versatility. None of these point to their performance. Have any of you folks tried them or do you know anyone who has? There is quite a bit online about Suntour bringing them out a few years ago but I can't find any reviews. 

http://somafab.blogspot.com/2013/03/sun-xcd-cranks-and-hubs.html

[Ron Mc]

After I broke a well-used T/A left side crank arm, I ended up buying a Sun XCD crank from Japan, for a wheelset and fender rebuild.  

The new chainline was also a bit better, mostly because it better fit the JIS tapers on my SKF bb (which I think was at least part of the reason the older TA cracked).  

Got a very good price, but maybe only $15 less than Jitsensha's price (after paying a broker charge).  
I have a few thousand miles on it since then.  Fits a cyclotouriste chainring assy perfectly.  It has flare on the crank arms, which the TA doesn't, but I actually prefer the wider stance.  

  

Not the stock spindle bolt covers in this photo, but titanium that was on ebay for awhile.   

[Patrick Moore]

Are these cold forged, as I think the Pro 5 Vis is?

They do look nice, but IIRC, the Velo Orange copies of the Cyclotourist were not as good as the original.

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 1:57 PM, Jack Doran <jackd...@gmail.com> wrote:

They are as beautiful as the venerable TA Cyclotouriste cranks with a low q factor but at half the price. They're also compatible with Specialites rings, which is nice for the sake of gearing versatility. None of these point to their performance. Have any of you folks tried them or do you know anyone who has? There is quite a bit online about Suntour bringing them out a few years ago but I can't find any reviews. 

http://somafab.blogspot.com/2013/03/sun-xcd-cranks-and-hubs.html

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[Kieran J]

I always like your drivetrain pics, Ron. I usually stare at them for a bit :-)

KJ

[Jack Doran]

Thanks for your response, Ron. Glad to hear some feedback on them. And that set up looks awfully pretty! I was wondering about the exact q factor since i couldn't find anything about it online, but it's good to know that they're at least somewhat wider than TA. Just out of curiosity, what was the issue with your TA's going on JIS tapers?

[Jack Doran]

They are cold-forged and, FWIW, there are adapters available for 110 and 130 BCD rings. 

http://sunxcd.net/cranks/

[Peter Adler]

Obviously, Ron's answer (when/if he supplies one) will trump mine, but:

Since the TA Pro V was an ISO crank (in all its generations, AFAIK), and the end of the ISO taper is smaller than JIS, a JIS spindle sits several millimeters (approximately 4.5mm) shallower in the crankarm spindle hole than an ISO spinlde would. Not only does this mean that there's less spindle-to-crank surface area in contact, but it may also put a stress riser in a place where the crank manufacturer didn't expect it. Combined with an older crank that's gotten knocked around, and the potential for cracking is higher; maybe not enough to freak out about, but higher than it would be with a similar ISO spindle/BB.

Peter "has run ISO 50.4 cranks on JIS spindles for years without incident, knock plastic wood" Adler

Berkeley, CA/USA

[Jan Heine]

It's a common misunderstanding that TA cranks use ISO threads, when in fact at least the older ones are JIS. The reason is simple: The Japanese copied the Stronglight/Herse/TA taper and then made it their JIS standard. So the JIS taper could also be called "French taper".

The ISO standard is based on Campy's cranks, which also are a copy of Stronglight/Herse, but they got it slightly "wrong" (or at least different), which is why the ISO standard is slightly different. (Most people seem to assume that ISO is European and JIS Japanese, so TA and others should be ISO. Not so.)

The two tapers are so similar that the tolerances actually overlap. I have seen Campy spindles that were closer to JIS than to ISO... It's similar with pedal threads, where metric and BSC are so similar that TA used to offer just one set of pedals for both threads.

So back to the original question, using a JIS spindle for a TA "Pro 5 vis" crank should not cause any problems. More likely than not, it is the correct spindle for this crank.

Jan Heine

Compass Bicycles Ltd.

www.compasscycle.com

[Ron Mc]

I think Peter's dead on, it may have not seated deeply enough, and I maybe contact stresses were too high. 

or it may have just been seated too many times on too many tapers.  I didn't know the age of it, it was a used ebay purchase. It broke leaving a stoplight downtown, and we were only a mile from a frankenbike meet, so I bought $5 LS crank arm to get home.  

I also see Jan's point, but it never quite looked right on the SKF JIS tapers.  Both my XCD and XD cranks seat a lot better on them.  

Thanks for your comments.  I was running an Ultra-6 before, and with the wheel swap cold-set the rear and went to a Winner wide 7, also went from 27" Paselas to 700c Strada Biancas.  

The resulting gearset is really sweet, and has become my benchmark for the hills where I live.  The half-steps overlap at 70", which is not a bad place to have an overlap.    It would be a little better with a 47T big ring, but they're hen's teeth

.  

26 61.5 % 42 9.5 % 46 32 21.9 35.4 38.8 28.0 % 25 28.1 45.4 49.7 19.0 % 21 33.4 54.0 59.1 16.7 % 18 39.0 63.0 69.0 12.5 % 16 43.9 70.9 77.6 14.3 % 14 50.1 81.0 88.7 16.7 % 12 58.5 94.5 103.5

The Q is much smaller than Sugino XD on my other bike.  The flare on 170mm crank arms is about 1 cm at the pedals.  For BB I'm running a 121 SKF with a 4mm spacer on the drive side, and the chainline, pedal spread and symmetry couldn't possibly be better.  The bailout ring sits right over the bb spacer, about 5mm closer to the frame than the bailout gear on my XD crank (different bike).  Pretty sure the flare is there so it will fit most any modern frame.  

[Ron Mc]

ps, 48T on the gear chart was right out, it overlapped on 4 gears.  

[Tim Gavin]

A little bit of crank arm flare is great, because then it should have the clearance to run a more modern FD.  

Those lovely old French cranks have low Q but very small clearance between the crank arm and the big ring, so modern FDs with a sculpted outer plate will usually hit the inside of the crank arm.

I have a lovely Stronglight 99 with that issue (too little clearance to run a modern FD).  Though the crank is set up as a triple, I have to use an old double FD to shift it -- which produces sub-par results.

That crank will be much more useful if I ever set it up as an ultra-compact double with a bash guard.

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 9:00 PM, Ron Mc <bulld...@gmail.com> wrote:

ps, 48T on the gear chart was right out, it overlapped on 4 gears.  

--

[Ron Mc]

I went through my Japan broker (noppin.com) to check my buying history and found the Japan website.  The seller has raised his price.  I paid JY 10,500 plus 20% broker fee, but the seller has raised his price to JY 134,000.  So Jitensha has the best price on the XCD crank arms.  

Though I just found this price in the UK - if they ship to US and subtract VAT from that, it's a steal

http://www.veloduo.co.uk/products/sun-tour-sunxcd-crank-arms-50-4-bcd-110-bcd-stronglight-49d-ta-cyclotouriste

[David Banzer]

Nice find. They do ship to the US, though VAT is not included in the listed price, so that'd be the price. About $105 shipped to the US.
David
Chicago

[Ron Mc]

that's less than I paid from Japan.  

On Thursday, January 7, 2016 at 11:21:27 AM UTC-6, David Banzer wrote:

Nice find. They do ship to the US, though VAT is not included in the listed price, so that'd be the price. About $105 shipped to the US.
David
Chicago

http://www.veloduo.co.uk/products/sun-tour-sunxcd-crank-arms-50-4-bcd-110-bcd-stronglight-49d-ta-cyclotouriste

[Jack Doran]

Thanks Ron and Dave, and an FYI for anyone else who may interested, lives in the Bay Area and likes to throw money Hiroshi's way: Jitensha doesn't have any at the moment.

[Jan Heine]

The photo shows that the crank seated fairly deeply. It was well within the range of what's acceptable. Much deeper, and you run the risk of bottoming out the crank bolt. The taper has a very shallow angle, so even small variations in the taper cause big differences in how deep the crank seats. Since there are tolerances in the dimensions of both BB and crank, you need some margin for these tolerances. If you designed the system that the BB spindle comes within 1 mm of the end of the crank, you'd get 10% where the spindle is a tad small or the crank taper a tad large, and the spindle would extend beyond the  edge of the crank. The crank bolt would bottom out, and you couldn't tighten the crank properly.

It's hard to speculate about the reason for the failure. It's not a place where the crank gets stressed in use, only when mounting. It could be that the crank was tightened repeatedly by a previous owner, and thus pulled further and further onto the spindle, until it "burst". (Repeated tightening is not recommended - install the crank and tighten it once 50 miles later. Then leave it alone. After 2 years or so, take it off, inspect it and reinstall it. But don't just tighten it every few months or so.) Another possible explanation is a flaw in the forging.

Jan Heine

Compass Bicycles Ltd.

www.compasscycle.com

[Ron Mc]

no worries Jan.  It was clearly fatigue cracking that started at the inside corners of the taper in the crank arm.  Also when I removed the drive side TA, I cleaned the tapers and dye-checked them.  There were no cracks, but there's also a lot more metal cross section there.  I'm pretty good about crank installation and torque.  I use grease and spanish cedar blocks to tap them on so I get good alignment, and have a really good indexing torque wrench (it's dial-vernier and clicks at the preset torque).  It was certainly not loose (which can cause cracking from uneven cyclic contact stress) - even cracked, there was no wobble until it quit full out.  I'm sure it was accumulated damage over its age.  I've bought 3 SKF BB from you, and would be the last person to badmouth them, so don't take this next observation wrong.  I have noticed both ISO (Campy Centaur) and JIS on the other two seem to have bigger square tapers than other spindles.  Out of the 3 cranks, the XD sits the deepest on them.  

[Jan Heine]

Ron,

I wasn't worried about the SKF BB's reputation, but just trying to figure out what could have happened to your poor crank. (I used to run a bunch of second-hand TAs without problems, but I switched to a René Herse on my Urban Bike as a precaution.) Interestingly, with the old TA crank tapers being JIS, that actually opens up a much larger range of suitable BBs.

The two tapers (JIS and ISO) are so close that you can get away with substituting JIS for ISO. We have several customers who run old Campagnolo Nuovo Record cranks (close to ISO taper) on JIS SKF bottom brackets. They use a 113 mm spindle instead of the 114.5, and that difference gives them the correct chainline (with a spacer to get the offset that the old Campy cranks required). The spindle penetrates 0.75 mm less into the crank, but that hasn't been a problem in practice. (Of course, we cannot officially recommend this.)

Jan Heine

Compass Bicycles Ltd.

www.compasscycle.com

On Friday, January 8, 2016 at 11:11:33 AM UTC+9, Ron Mc wrote:

no worries Jan.  It was clearly fatigue cracking that started at the inside corners of the taper in the crank arm.  [...]I've bought 3 SKF BB from you, and would be the last person to badmouth them, so don't take this next observation wrong.  

[Joe Bunik]

Jan/Ron/all,
just a quick note, and I'll need to dredge the archives - but seem to
recall some scuttlebutt that the 1st batch of these XCD cranks had
breakage issues, and possibly were called back. I hope I am correct in
saying that!
=- Joe

[Ron Mc]

I have a few thousand on mine and am totally delighted with it.  I'm also pretty tough on cranks and BB - 6'3", 215, stand hard and ride aggressively.  

What was broken was used T/A left side arm of unknown age.  I wasn't really complaining about anything, as much as justifying why I bought the XCD to begin with...

[Joel]

After corresponding with a shop in the UK the suggest using TA Pro 5 Vis Cyclotouriste.  The day I could do a triple with this but everywhere I have looked shows them as an inner/outer.  For a bunch more money I could get a 110 adapter and use TA Zephyr rings which I have used in the past, even have some extras here.  But to be honest I am totally confused as I am not mechanical.  I was set to use either the Sugino XD600 but have found out it is hot forged which I believe is not as good as cold forged.  The VO crankset I brought in has a slight finish defect on the outside of the outer ring.  Using the SunXCD is probablt $100 more since they are not readily available here in the US.  

[lconley]

The triple TA Cyclotourise Pro 5 Vis is just the double with longer bolts and extra spacers and another chainring. I have a SunXCD, but I run it as a single with a VO chainring. For the triple, the outer chain ring bolts to the crank and the inner two chain rings bolt to the outer chainring.

Peter White (peterwhitecycles.com) in New Hampshire is a US distributor for TA and should be able to set you up with what you need.

Laing

[Joel Stern]

Thanks, I know Peter, he is going to build some wheels for me.  I wonder if this makes for a wider Q than using the 110 adaptor?  The shop in the YK can do it all, I an just not versed in the Pro 5 V chainrings. I have almost always used the Zephyr but sold my other one on a bike (kicking myself as I type).  

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[Garth]

  Have you seen these Andel cranks Joel, they're 110 BCD 170mm straight arms from Andel, who is a well known quality crank manufacturer. They also happen to make Rivs Silver crank. This particular crank only says "forged", but frankly neither are many high quality cranks, like TA Carmina. It's the quality of the forging and design that counts regardless of the temperature. You'd have to inquire about shipping.

https://thecycleclinic.co.uk/products/andel-rsc7-road-touring-fluted-chainset-triple-170mm-48-36-26t-square-taper?_pos=31&_sid=0690bd31b&_ss=r

http://www.andel.com.tw/products_d.php?pid=55&cid=12

[Joel Stern]

Thanks Garth, looks great, could not find it with a 165mm.

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