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

[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.

[RDY]

Can anyone recommend some high quality, light, with solid side entry carbon bottle cages?  Need some for MTB.

[PLA]

fidlock all day

[TidyDinosaur]

Can anyone recommend some high quality, light, with solid side entry carbon bottle cages?  Need some for MTB.

I use these. Not carbon, but light and cheap. They work well with 750ml bottles, but not so great for 1l bottles.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002203998370.html

[jannmayer]

Anyone have any experience with the ZTTO P3 BOOST hubs? They're 6 pawl with 72 points of engagement. Weight is just OK, but the price is good. I will confess that the main reason I am interested is because they have a lime green option.


https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803355100658.html


They promise "magical reliability" and "can be counted on to last for enough miles."

[frnchy]

Can anyone recommend some high quality, light, with solid side entry carbon bottle cages?  Need some for MTB.

These impressed me enough that I'm using them on my road and gravel bikes: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805834827357.html

I wouldn't use them on a downhill bike with 1 liter bottles in them, but an XC bike with standard 650ml or even 750ml bottles should be fine.

Anyone have any experience with the ZTTO P3 BOOST hubs? They're 6 pawl with 72 points of engagement. Weight is just OK, but the price is good. I will confess that the main reason I am interested is because they have a lime green option.


https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803355100658.html


They promise "magical reliability" and "can be counted on to last for enough miles."

I have these hubs on my mountain bike (boost) and commuter bike (non-boost) and I also had the non-boost version on my gravel wheels until I had to swap them out to run a 12 speed road cassette. Though heavy, they're super easy to build into a wheel, well finished, and the bearings run smooth. I confess that I don't have a real long-term review of them - only about 600 miles of use on the set that used to be on the gravel bike and only about 200 miles on each of my mountain bike and commuter bike sets - but hubs don't really change over time, the bearings just wear out and the ones on the P3 hubs are completely standard and easy to source. The freehub has reasonably high engagement, I haven't wished for more on the mountain bike, and it's a bog-standard pawl system so no worries about ratchets slipping or anything. I don't know if they can offer "magical reliability" but I'm pretty sure they can be counted on to last for enough miles.