Stages Power has finally unlocked a way to bring their single sided power meter to left crank arms everywhere. Or, at least, to modern Campy, FSA and most SRAM cranksets.
To make it work with carbon,they had to develop a new strain gauge and assembly method – it takes about 30% longer to install them on carbon then on the alloy arms. They have to polish off the top clear coat layers, but don’t worry, Stages assumes the warranty from the original manufacturer should anything happen. The actual physical changes to the strain gauge and other internals are not something they would divulge. But they did say that one of the biggest challenges was keeping it accurate in fluctuating temperatures. Once they solved that, they were able to offer a product that doesn’t need to be zero calibrated when the temps change, maintaining its accuracy from ride to ride.
Three brands are on offer. The first is FSA, which is attached to their SLK-Light crank arm made for the BB386 standard.
For SRAM, they’re offering a Stages branded arm that’s manufactured by FSA and mimics their SLK Light BB30crank arm. By using different spindles, it can be paired with any FSA 386 crankset, SRAM Red/Force/Rival and many of SRAM’s mountain bike BB30 cranksets. There’ll also a GXP compatible version in carbon, too.
The Stages crank arms weighs in at _____.
With spindles, weights shown above are left to right for SRAM RED 22, FORCE/Rival 22 and SRAM MTB 168mm spindle, which will work XX, XX1, X0, X01.
The Campy version is available for Super Record, Record and Chorus.
All housings, including those on the alloy arms, get a new design that has better manufacturing tolerances, so any issues with battery door that plagued them in the past should be history. The new design is 28% slimmer on the main body, which is where most clearance issues happened with chainstay-mounted brakes, but the battery door is almost as tall as normal out of necessity. Frontal area is 17% smaller, making them slightly more aero, too.
Euro pricing shown above, USD pricing wasn’t immediately available, but expect it to be $100 to $200 above the Euro pricing on average (our guess, not theirs). Availability ranges from January through March 2016 depending on model.
