Hey everyone, welcome to the channel!
Traditionally aluminum cranks have provided us with best bang for the buck
and both Shimano and SRAM provide us today with a wide range of options.
But if you were to pick from the top of the line aluminum cranks
I guess you would pick the GX for SRAM and you would pick the SLX/ XT for Shimano
excluding XTR which is in a different league.
How would you pick between these two?
Which one is better? GX from SRAM, SLX/XT from Shimano? Let's take a closer look!
And I said SLX and XT because if you guys remember from this video
there's not much difference between SLX and XT from Shimano.
Actually the SLX can be a couple of grams lighter.
And why don't we start with weight to get that big elephant out of the room!
And what we have here is a Shimano SLX M7100, 170 mm cranks, 32 tooth chainring and
the equivalent SRAM Eagle GX.
Straight out of the box we're looking at
624 grams for the Shimano SLX
and the SRAM GX, the new Lunar grey comes up to 629 grams
so we're talking 5 grams difference between these two cranksets.
However where it becomes interesting is if we're just going to measure the cranks without the chainrings,
that would be relevant if you were to use them with third-party chainrings like these absoluteBlack ovals.
Shimano cranks by themselves will come up to 495 grams
and Eagle GX cranks come up to 545 grams,
so 50 grams difference between SRAM GX aluminum and SLX aluminum cranks,
the difference must come from the Hollowtech II technology which pretty much means hollow aluminum cranks.
Add the weight of one of these third-party chainrings which is 55 grams
and you end up with 550 grams for the Shimano and about 600g for SRAM.
SRAM can only get to those weights by using carbon so the winner of this first category is Shimano.
Starting with Shimano you can see here 2 of the 3 chainrings available for this product line,
I'm looking at the SLX/ XT chainring, the XTR, and they have another direct mount chainring for Deore.
And I said direct mount because all these chainrings are direct mount whether they come from SRAM or Shimano,
Shimano being the late adaptor of this technology.
If you're looking at their chainrings, not only that they are 120 grams weightwise,
but these are built quite interestingly: you have that aluminum spider that has a steel ring bolted onto it.
Now putting aside the eventual issues from using all these bolts that some of you might be aware of,
this chainring should last quite a bit again the outer ring here is made out of steel.
They only use aluminum for the XTR line and this is not necessarily an XTR, it's an XTR lookalike,
these should be lighter and they are, you see this one at 67 grams,
and I mentioned the DEORE chainring which looks quite different than this and it adds about 10 grams.
SRAM Eagle will give you this cold forged aluminum chainring that comes up to 80 grams.
They do have the fancier version of this, the CNC machined version of this that usually comes with something like XX1,
that one is 68 grams so 12 grams improvement in weight, both of these are made out of aluminum.
SRAM also gives us an oval, believe it or not,
this is actually very good and very similar to something like absoluteBlack,
this is 73 grams but this is a 34 tooth.
Finally SRAM it's going to give us this: an all steel chainring that it's available or provided with a lot of their more budget oriented cranks.
This is fully compatible with Eagle 12 speed, it uses the X-sync 2 tooth profile
and the weight of this is a 143 grams, so about 25 grams heavier than SLX
but this is made out of steel through and through.
You could argue that this heavier SRAM chainring is the only one equivalent to what SLX and XT offer in terms of longevity
however in my experience, the aluminum chainrings made by Shimano, SRAM or others are not that bad in terms of longevity.
So plenty of options from both companies, similar weights whether you're going for full aluminum or steel ring,
however SRAM offers you ovals so if you are into that kind of stuff you would consider that an advantage for SRAM.
But how are the two companies dealing with installation of these new direct mount chainrings?
And in case of SRAM they use the good old 3-bolt mounting system in which case right here on the drive side
you're gonna have one, two, three bolts,
and you would use a simple T25 Torx like many other SRAM components
to tighten this up to anywhere between 8-9 Nm.
Shimano has reused their CENTER LOCK idea that they've used with their rotors for the longest time
in which you're going to just install the chainring
and then you're gonna use this lock ring that you can see is specific to SLX and XT
to tighten it up to anywhere between 35 and 50 Nm.
Now the idea of a center lock is common but what's not common is the need to use this new tool:
TL-FC41, and you would slide this over the spindle and tighten it up.
That tightening torque is not that easy to measure
so overall I would give this category to SRAM for the simplicity and also more options available.
I covered the chainline and spacing of the current Shimano cranks in this video
and even though it's not that well documented SRAM is using the same principle
and that is longer overall spindle for 55 mm chainline.
SRAM calls it MTB WIDE or Super Boost Plus (SB+), that's 56.5 millimeters chainline.
However if SRAM is providing us on pretty much any crankset with the option of this 49 millimeter chainline (non Boost)
next to the others that I just mentioned,
Shimano, let's take this Deore for 142 or 148 mm rear spacing
you're gonna see that the only chainline they support is 52 mm
and that would definitely be more extreme than necessary especially for 135 and 142 mm rear spacing bikes.
That's because Shimano provides just one offset for their chainrings regardless of the chainline
as opposed to SRAM approach in which case they have
this 6 mm offset chainring for non-Boost frames
and they provide us with the 3 mm offset for Boost and Super Boost frames.
For providing this flexibility I give this chainline category to SRAM because they provide us options for the older bikes.
And last category is a bit of a biggie for me, bottom bracket compatibility.
These days we're very used to using the SRAM DUB bottom brackets that were introduced in 2018
to replace the 24 and 30 millimeter spindle standards.
These bottom brackets are able to accommodate pretty much any frame bottom bracket shell,
and in case you didn't know DUB stands for Durable Unified Bottom Bracket.
And while I agree with the unified part of that definition
when it comes to the durable, the 28.99 mm spindle diameter made out of aluminum
allowed SRAM to reduce the weight of their cranksets however
it also forced them to use very tiny bearings in these bottom brackets.
They do work okay most of the time however we had the chance to ride our bikes this summer
in not so ideal conditions and at the end of it this is how my DUB bottom brackets look like!
Needless to say they were absolutely destroyed.
In contrast, the GXP bottom bracket, the old standard, the 24 mm spindle made out of steel
survived the same race no problems whatsoever.
Surprise, surprise! That's exactly what Shimano is using,
not the GXP but the 24 mm diameter spindle made out of steel,
and that also means that the Shimano bottom brackets can accommodate beefier bearings,
they seem to be better sealed, for me the Shimano bottom brackets seem to last forever
and if you take a look at the box here you're gonna see that they come in all kinds of shapes and forms
trying to accommodate frame bottom bracket shells available in the market today
So for bottom brackets, if I am to choose I would always go for Shimano bottom brackets.
If I am to choose a crankset that's long lasting and is not that expensive
something like SLX would be my choice probably eight times out of ten.
Alternatively to something like an Eagle GX, you can go either for the Descendant
which is a cheaper version of the same crank or Stylo that I reviewed not too long ago on my channel.
Again, two cheaper variants of something like SRAM Eagle GX which is usually more expensive than the Shimano SLX equivalent.
However if you are after the lowest weight and carbon cranks SRAM is your only option!
Shimano doesn't make any carbon cranks and even their XTR is right around 540 grams
whereas the SRAM XX1 SL is at 425 grams.
so there we have it folks, Shimano aluminum cranks versus SRAM aluminum cranks.
Which one do you use? Do you like one versus the other?
Do you go for carbon instead? Let me know in the comments below,
let me know if you have any questions, let me know if you like this video and if you did
don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment,
until next time hope to see you folks on the trails!
Cheers guys, cheers!