Just bought a HT frame mainly to use on wet days, short rides and winter grit and grime.

What Chainsets are recommended? On the list are…. (Not bothered about bling just reliability and weight secondly)

FSA V Drive MEGAEXO – £65
Truvativ Firex Team/GXP – £45
SLX – £100
XT – £135

What headsets are well proven? Again reliability first, weight second. Don’t want to spend a fortune.

STW committee answer:

SLX Cranks
FSA Orbit XLII

SLX would be my choice – good value, strong, decent middle chainring

Headset – FSA Orbit XL2/XLII – cheap (£20ish) and last years with no problems.

EDIT (Glad to agree with Stoner 🙂 )

STW: We are the Borg 🙂

Headset = FSA Pig

If you want a real bag of worms then you should have a superstarcomponents headsent and crankset on that list.

If you’re not bothered about weight get the deore chainset and save more money.

Cheers for the input so far guys. FSA headset on the list.

Are FSA & Truvativ chainsets that much worse than Shimano they’re not worth considering? Seems little in weight difference.

I like the FSA v-drive I got for my wife’s bike, looks nice and the chainrings are better than shimano IMO. Very good at that price. I would avoid truvativ though.