As you probably know from a fairly recent post, I have been digging through some of the stuff in my bike room lately. Last night, I came across my old Sweet Parts catalog from the mid nineties. Man, I absolutely loved those Sweet Wings cranks when they first came out, which probably explains why I still have the 12+ year old catalog. At the time, I thought that the triangulated truss spider was the greatest thing since sliced bread. These cranks, along with the Alex Pong designed Magic motorcycle cranks from roughly the same era (scroll down a little to see them), were way ahead of their time. There were quite a few CNC aluminum cranks on the market in the mid nineties (I had Cook Bros on my mountain bike), but hollow crank arms were not at all common. The later Cannondale Hollogram and Shimano Hollowtech cranksets can trace their design origins back to the Magic and Sweet designs. The Sweet Wings system (cranks and bottom bracket) weighed just over 500 grams. The large diameter, hollow tubular bottom bracket spindle that was integrated with the left crankarm was incredibly innovative at the time. If you don’t remember Sweet Wings, take a closer look at the inside of the catalog. It is amazing how similar some of the design elements are to the cranksets that we are used to today. To quote Mountain Bike magazine’s review at the time, these really were the “world’s sweetest crank” in the nineties.
Speaking of nice looking cranks, Go Clipless posted some pictures of the new Crank Brothers components including a single speed crankset. I generally like the design of Crank Brother’s products, so I am happy to see them expand their product line. The new products all look very clean with nice attention to detail. I can’t wait to see this stuff in person.
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