Interesting Aliexpress finds! - good deals, interesting stuff, new products etc!

[bremerradkurier]

"Planet Cyclery" is going out of business/closing its doors.   (I presume they are another online retailer that didn't manage the past few years very well)

I spent about a 1/2 hour looking at all of their sale prices.  From my perspective, their "sale prices" are still to expensive compared to the deals I get on a regular basis through Aliexpress.

Their sister company Colorado Cyclist is doing the same, and Merlin Cycles in the UK still undercuts both of them on Shimano components.

Colorado Cyclist was great in the 80s to early 2000s with awesome mail order catalogs.

[AzureEssence]

I j recently got some 6 bolt rotors

Zooms were trash

Avids are great

[zxcvbnmjm]

racework crankset with dub spindle and self extracting crankbolts.

Are they new? Or did i miss them

Edit: just saw this pic of them with the new 105 three bolt chainrings! Lol

[Serge_K]

I installed the old design on 5 bikes, and i cracked one non drive side arm at 6 or 7nm. Racework is largely useless to deal with. They made so many mistakes in my order with them that i can't remember the exact count. Beyond the cranks, i bought 12s chains from them, they sent me 11s, the bar tape they sold me is the absolute worst i've ever used, and more. They refused to warranty anything, including the crank arm even though it was low torque (they dont tell you what torque to use, btw), but i managed to buy a replacement one for cheap enough - abnormal, but at least i still have 5 cranksets to use and not 4, for now anyway -.
We've put around 5k km on all these cranksets so far, i'd say. to avoid cracking more crank arms, i'm using 5nm and an obscene amount of threadlock. It's been working.
Either way they updated the non drive side design.
I wouldn't recommend them, goes without saying, but to be fair, i'm happy with the cranksets as long as it's not broken - kind of like i'm happy with my ltwoo er9 when it's not broken, the problem being that out of 5, 2 broke for no reason -, and their 3d printed saddles are nice too.

[jonathanf2]

The 2nd iteration Racework crankset is also the same design as the Riro crankset.

It's an improvement over the previous design, but I did have problems installing it on non-Shimano bottom brackets. It would seize up before fully locking down. It works fine on both Shimano Ultegra PF and threaded BSA bottom brackets, but I had issues installing it on my threaded PF BB that was non-Shimano. I'm guessing it might be a difference in bearing size that's causing an issue?

This 29mm axle version looks interesting for the 3rd design iteration. I'm guessing it locks in from the non-drive side with a built-in locking screw. I wonder if they'll use this design for the 24mm axle version?

[AzureEssence]

Does anyone know if the 170mm Zrace Blade cranks are actually 5mm shorter than the 175's? Or do they just drill the hole 5mm higher?

Also, has anyone tried the new Evosid cranks (5Dev clones)? They look incredible, both the silver and the black with splatter paint, however I'm not 100% confident that they will be strong enough considering they've copied a Titanium crank design and made them out of 6061 aluminum.

[aliexpress_junkie]

I installed the old design on 5 bikes, and i cracked one non drive side arm at 6 or 7nm. Racework is largely useless to deal with. They made so many mistakes in my order with them that i can't remember the exact count. Beyond the cranks, i bought 12s chains from them, they sent me 11s, the bar tape they sold me is the absolute worst i've ever used, and more. They refused to warranty anything, including the crank arm even though it was low torque (they dont tell you what torque to use, btw), but i managed to buy a replacement one for cheap enough - abnormal, but at least i still have 5 cranksets to use and not 4, for now anyway -.
We've put around 5k km on all these cranksets so far, i'd say. to avoid cracking more crank arms, i'm using 5nm and an obscene amount of threadlock. It's been working.
Either way they updated the non drive side design.
I wouldn't recommend them, goes without saying, but to be fair, i'm happy with the cranksets as long as it's not broken - kind of like i'm happy with my ltwoo er9 when it's not broken, the problem being that out of 5, 2 broke for no reason -, and their 3d printed saddles are nice too.

Wait so you had TWO failures with the er9 groupset and you still went ahead and got five? Or am I not reading this correctly.

"Happy as long as it's not broken" is not good enough, any failure during a 100+km ride is something that will ruin your day, and something that very rarely happens with groupsets from the big three.

[Confused]

Also, has anyone tried the new Evosid cranks (5Dev clones)? They look incredible, both the silver and the black with splatter paint, however I'm not 100% confident that they will be strong enough considering they've copied a Titanium crank design and made them out of 6061 aluminum.

The original 5Devs are aluminum. For $63 it is tempting to get a set to try out.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806663709748.html

[Serge_K]

Wait so you had TWO failures with the er9 groupset and you still went ahead and got five? Or am I not reading this correctly.

"Happy as long as it's not broken" is not good enough, any failure during a 100+km ride is something that will ruin your day, and something that very rarely happens with groupsets from the big three.

i bought 5 groups at the same time. i had 4 bikes to build and i bought a spare one in case one would be dead on arrival or self destruct immediately. Built the 4 bikes, everything was fine for weeks, i then received a frame to review so i put the spare group on that. After weeks of "this stuff is wonderful", all hell started to break loose. The 2 dead RDs aren't the only problems i've had either. Had another problem yesterday i posted on the erx/9 dedicated thread.

[PLA]

i bought 5 groups at the same time. i had 4 bikes to build and i bought a spare one in case one would be dead on arrival or self destruct immediately. Built the 4 bikes, everything was fine for weeks, i then received a frame to review so i put the spare group on that. After weeks of "this stuff is wonderful", all hell started to break loose. The 2 dead RDs aren't the only problems i've had either. Had another problem yesterday i posted on the erx/9 dedicated thread.

That's an impressive failure rate.

[jonathanf2]

 I swapped out the LTwoo calipers I was running on both my ER9 and Ultegra equipped bikes for ZRace XG calipers that were in my parts bin. I mainly did it because I recently picked up a pair of Kactus 140mm CL rotors and I was having a problem mounting them on LTwoo calipers with their stupid bracket adapters. Anyways, I cut about 100g going with the ZRace calipers. Hopefully they hold up!

[toxin]

Do update us on how it goes with those calipers, please.

[jonathanf2]

Do update us on how it goes with those calipers, please.

After I posted this, I ended up switching both my road bikes to a 160/140 Kactus rotor setup with these ZRace XG calipers. I had no problem with the Ltwoo calipers, but they're just heavy. The Kactus rotors have excellent bite (using them on my gravel bike), so I'm presume going to 140mm in the rear shouldn't be an issue for road. I'll be able to see how the ZRace XG/Kactus combo handles on my local mountain descents.

[toxin]

Do they still have that issue with the hose blocking the fluid channel if inserted too deep that tracevelo had, or are the also the updated version like the IIIpro with that fixed?

[jonathanf2]

This guy on YT said his was fine and he posted his video 7 months ago. So I'm guessing the calipers have been fixed.
https://youtu.be/FdZO2ZHmFio?t=125

I forgot to check mine, but I shoved the olive all the way in the ZRace calipers and both pistons seem to be squeezing. It appears mineral oil is reaching both pistons on each caliper.