Hey everyone, after riding the GX Eagle with this 32 tooth oval chainring from OneUp
I finally caved in, my excuse was that it will fit perfectly my cranks
and I got this direct mount SRAM oval chainring. Specifically designed for Eagle
this particular one is 32 tooth, 3mm offset like I mentioned.
Made in Taiwan, manufacturing date and that is the part number for this product.
So let's take a closer look, see what's the deal with this new expensive oval from SRAM.
Opens up, it is an envelope style
And here's the ring.
The only thing that's in the box aside from the ring is the three screws
needed to install it.
Chainring itself is beautifully made, you can see the laser
etching here for Eagle, SRAM 32T Eagle Technology, second generation of
their tooth profile. Forged aluminum and then machine to shape.
See these reinforcing webs here really nicely done.
On the back of it you're gonna have a
few more pieces of information, the offset of this chainring which is for
Boost, 3 mm, of course they recommend SRAM chains.
Somewhere in here you have an etched serial number, yes, right here
and also on the inside they give you details
on how to install this.
This oval chainring uses the same tooth
profile as all their other round chainrings, it's called the X-sync 2
And they claim to be optimized for better chain retention and also is designed to
minimize wear and noise on the drivetrain.
Now if you ask their competition
they might have a different opinion.
What you see now is their previous tooth
profile the X-sync, so the first a narrow wide tooth profile they've introduced
with 11 speed. You see the shape of the teeth is rather ordinary but
apparently as these teeth wear out you will experience what's called
the chain suck, so they really had to redesign this
to make that go away.
You can see how they differ, they definitely used some of the
same design concepts from their previous design.
Aside from the shark fin like shape of the new teeth.
Back of the teeth, same thing, you can see the more refined
design here on Eagle and also this chamfer at the bottom of the tooth
to push away dirt.
It's not that pronounced on the Eagle tooth shape.
And looking at the competition
here is an absoluteBLACK, you can see the tooth profile
that they claim that works perfectly fine with Eagle.
And finally the OneUp tooth profile
they don't look anything special but they seem to work just fine with 12 speed Eagle.
Not mentioned in the spec but this seems to be about 12% oval
32T in my case goes from 30 to 34 over here.
Second important thing for an oval is
the timing or clocking or when the bigger part of the chainring kicks in
in your pedal stroke.
I have an OneUp over here which is identical with the absoluteBLACK
and if I line up this dimple with this little notch over here
you will just see that these are absolutely identical.
So clocking, timingwise, these are made
to be exactly the same, at least in this 32 tooth
incarnation of the chainring.
For installation all you need is a T25 Torx bit
and a torque wrench.
The three screws that comes with it, they already have Loctite on them.
As you grab the crank arm you have this spline.
Make sure you put a little bit of grease on it.
Then your chainring is only gonna fit one way
See it here.
Install the three bolts and then
torque them to the recommended 8-9Nm and you're good to go.
Direct mount saves weight and it looks cleaner
this one is 69 grams which is pretty much the weight of the other option from
SRAM which is this spider. And you have to add up the weight of the bolts and
the chainring on top of that.
To summarize all that, the
ovals from SRAM work on both 11 and 12 speed cranks, they were designed for GXP
SRAM cranks, that is the 24mm axle that you see here.
BB30 or PF30 would not work with them, I assume that is because of the offset.
They're only available in 3 and 6 mm.
Also big question is whether they will work
with the newly launched DUB cranksets
that come very close to that 30mm axle.
They come in 32, 34, 36, and 38 sizes only, so if you want to go any higher
or lower than that this won't work.
And the biggest problem that I see is the
fact that smaller competitors out there offer you more options for less money
so it would be really hard to justify the price point of the SRAM oval.
And since my only chance to verify some of their claims is by putting miles on the bike
I'm gonna add this to the pile of things to be reviewed
at the end of this upcoming season.
And that is all I have for you today folks.
if you want to check out prices use the links in the description.
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And until the next time I'll see you on the trails.
Cheers guys!