After months of collecting really cool mountain bike cranks we decided it was time to treat all of you to one of our famous 'crank stiffness tests' where we put a bunch of cranks in our jig, test them, crunch the numbers and leave the results so that you can choose your next dream crankset.

We returned to our test fixture to compare 15 modern road and gravel bike stems using repeatable deflection measurements, recorded weights and stiffness-to-weight calculations. This page explains how we performed the test, how to interpret the measurements and what the results suggest about materials, aerodynamics and internal routing, with direct access to BikeRumor’s complete data and analysis.

This is the 3rd test in our series, road handlebars. We’ve once again brought back our favorite engineer, Jason Krantz. Jason’s a mechanical engineer whose graduate work focused on the intersection of composite materials and finite element analysis. Jason has worked for several companies in the bicycle industry and never fails to amaze us with the depth of his cycling related knowledge. He adds real value to all of the tests we perform.

In celebration of Fair Wheel Bikes' 50th Anniversary we have dusted off our stiffness testing apparatus to once again measure crank stiffness. This time we have a pile of modern road bike cranksets to see where each crank manufacturer stacks up.