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so it’s a 5 arm spider which can only be used with their chainrings?

To me, this is a bit backwards.
The idea of direct mount is clean lines, stiffness advantages (probably) and choice of offset.

Why not just produce aftermarket spiders with varying offsets/crank compatibilities for use with one of the many standard chainring BCD’s? surely that would do the same job, but without having to use their 5 arm chainrings.

or am I missing something?

what do you think?

That’s what I just said on the article. Pointless creation of new standards when they didn’t need to.

yeah just saw that, 🙂

dafter than dafty mcdaftface

Ah but if they just made a spider to convert to 104 4 arm then you wouldn’t be tied into buying their chainrings!

104 4 bolt can restrict chainring size, 94bcd in either 4 or 5 arm, or even offset 4 arm like current shimano or quirky 1×11 bolt pattern of sram would open things up a bit (of course many people already make these sorts of things so why crowd the market when you can just make things only your parts are compatible with)

It could be its 94-5 but it looks like the tabs for the chainring to sit on are smaller, thus allowing alu bolts.

104 is just a bit big for the chainring sizes some people want with their one-bys. With 98 mm five-arm (old style 5 arm compact) you can go down to a 28t but only with spacers. So a new bolt standard was needed. But there already is the SRAM 94 mm one, which accommodates down to a 28t though that is four bolt. Which Wolf Tooth already make rings for, and direct mount ones.

So what I don’t understand is why they didn’t take the SRAM 94mm four bolt standard and make spiders for that in varying offsets.

Haven’t seen what the bcd is for CAMO though.

ETA somewhat ninja’d by STATO there.

you’d have thought this is the kind of thing that superstar would have looked at. well, I would have thought so…;-)