Race Face Aeffect Crankset

When I am looking for a crankset I am looking for a few main things, durability, functionality, and price. These tick the boxes on almost all of these in stride with a few minor exceptions. Price was definitely a motivating factor for me, I wanted a cinch compatible crankset, but I did not need anything fancy, and these cranks were the cheapest cinch option that I found. They have understated looks, but this makes them look sharp on pretty much any bike, without drawing attention to them. Installation was a breeze if you have the tools on hand. One issue did come up on my first ride where the chainring despite being torqued to spec came loose. I then realized that in order to remove the arm to tighten the ring I needed a crank puller which I do not carry on rides with me. Older Race Face Cranks often came with a self extracting bolt which would have allowed me to at least tighten the ring a little and prevent damaging the crank/ ring interface.

The smaller spindle on these compared to the carbon offerings/ the turbine cranks was an initial concern, but I have yet to notice any issues and I am a big dude. Some people may notice a bit more flex with these than others, but I have not found it to be a problem, and I am not focused on being super efficient anyways or I would stop eating so much junk food.

I have ran these for about 8 months in the bike park, on my local trails, and around COlorado and they have held up awesome, no issues with the bottom bracket developing play or grinding, play in the cranks developing, or breakages. I have banged these on rocks more times than I can count with clumsy pedaling, and no major damage has occurred, minus some paint coming off at the pedal spindle interface, and some scratches.

I bought the crankset without a ring (running an oval wolftooth ring), so I cannot speak to the RaceFace rings, but I have had good luck in the past with them. Overall a great buy if you are looking for something dead simple that simply works, no fuss, no gimmicks. I would replace the main bolt with a self extracting one, which you can easily get from Race Face, aside from that, solid cranks