Race Face and the 428g chainset

Race Face NEXT SL cranks

428g of carbon crankness – or 438g if you run the optional (and available in colours) crank boots at the end. That’s what Race Face’s new carbon cranks, carbon fibre spider and 34T chainring weighs in at.

Race Face has looked everywhere to save every gram – including some pointless looking weight relief on the cranks that apparently saves 6g, but it all counts, right? The crank inserts are stronger now too, but the cranks are still lighter.

That’s the heavy version – the rubber boots are 5g an arm

As light as it gets?

The big weight saving is in the chainring and spider. The carbon fibre spider is co-moulded into the chainring. This makes it 13% stiffer than the regular Cinch chainring.

The front of the new co-moulded chainring/spider

Here’s the back of the chainring

The cranks will come in 170mm or 175mm and the chainrings will be 28-36. The cranks are out now. The rings will be here in July or so. The US price is $479 for the cranks and $90 for the noticeably light, new rings.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)