Look on the DT Swiss site for their calculator. I’ve used it many times and it’s always been accurate.

Yes, the locked position for the lever is down. Pull up to release. It has a detent that the lever snaps in for the lock position. Also it has foam strips on the lower section of the lid to prevent vibration. I only have 50 miles on the bike since I finished the build Saturday and so far there are no rattles and nothing has come loose

Nice 👍🏼
I hope it remains rattle free.

Enjoy your new build

I have the latest version of the door and with bottle cage bolts it is 53g.
I just received my frameset 4 days ago.

Cool, is that the version 3 door with downwards lever ?

Foot position is exactly what I meant. Not everyone uses cleats, so “cleat position” would have been unnecessarily specific. On flat pedals, the position of the pedal under the foot can vary considerably and affects the effective distance from the hip to the pedal, ankle movement and the angles measured during a bike fit.

Going from 172.5 mm to 165 mm changes the pedal path by 7.5 mm at both the top and bottom of the stroke. If the saddle is left unchanged, the rider has less hip and knee flexion at the top but more knee flexion at the bottom. If the saddle is raised to restore the original leg extension, that then changes saddle-to-bar drop, and because the saddle moves along the seat-tube angle, it also changes its horizontal position slightly.

That doesn’t mean shorter cranks are bad. They can be very useful, particularly where excessive hip or knee flexion is causing a problem. My point was simply that changing crank length changes several aspects of the fit, so it is sensible to assess the whole position rather than assume it is an isolated change with no possible trade-offs.   But yeah, clearly I don’t understand the subject because I didn’t turn an internet-forum reply into a biomechanics dissertation.

You wrote

Changing cranks changes a lot of things.  So while it could help with your medical issue it might change things for the worse on your overall position.

Obviously it changes other aspects of your fit. That has already been mentioned here.
I’m keen to understand how it changes things for the worse ? Or was that a general throw away statement ?

The vast majority of people will be using cleats and clipless pedals so their foot position is fixed. For those using flat pedals, well, they are in the minority and I’m not sure they’d be that interested in the biomechanics of shorter cranks given the limited repeatability of their foot placement and retention

2.5 mm can be swallowed just by the small amount of slack in your shoes. The cleat can effectively move back or forth more than that - which is the same for everyone, but puts it into perspective.

If you want change, you need to make change. 5mm will not make much of an effective difference, so I’d be willing to bet any felt “benefit” is placebo rather than mechanical or physical.

I built a bike for a friend of mine who was having some fit issues. I swapped him from a 175mm to a 165mm and he didn’t notice the shorter length, but he noticed his hip muscles weren’t as tight anymore.


Currently swapping all his bikes to 165 as the cranks become available

You can always relegate them to winter tyres as theyll be a solid choice for that.

DIY fit (or yolo) vs bike fit vs online fit is a key question for most, could be a separate thread.

Beyond cost of real life fit, there's distance / wait lists, and maybe even more importantly, it's very easy to find people who go through a bike fit and ultimately regret it. (not worth it, incompetence...).
I think that people who experience pain on the bike "should" get a bike fit. But i dont think i'd say the same for those who dont.

Moving to online bike fit tools, if it turns out to work well, sounds like a great development. I wanted to point out that https://www.youtube.com/@myvelofit has a toooon of videos, so there's a good chance that whether free or paid, the myvelofit experience is likely to be better if you spend time watching some of their stuff. I suspect that most people who're thinking about a bike fit have a specific area of interest. Mine, currently, is wondering how much more stack i should / could add to my cockpit (and how much longer the stem should be) so that i can have a more sustainable puppy paws position. And when that would start affecting handling downhill.
For that, I do miss very much the era of being able to swap out stems for 10 eur, or even using adjustable stems.
I think i saw a youtuber (peak torque?) saying their favourite feature on their dedicated home trainer was the ability to change fits in minutes (like the zwift / wahoo bike). A bike fit at home where you're stuck in one front position because of your cockpit sounds like a huge limiting aspect.

Maybe the answer is finding a friend with such rig, and do one's fit at his place one day

I’ve found that a turbo trainer position and a bike you ride on the road have different positions which aren’t necessarily transferable.
Sounds strange but it’s a real thing, so I’d be cautious setting up a bike on a turbo, then replicating that.


As you rightly said, bike fit it another thread entirely, but so now I hope this helps people.

my guess is very few people, no matter how many times it's suggested, will get a bike fit.  folks are spending $700 on a frame, so $200-300 for a bike fit may be difficult.  i'm all for bike fits (used to do them) but i understand the friction. 

truth is most people are still think of choosing a bike like buying a T-shirt (small/medium/large/etc).  in the simplistic terms that's technically true, but yes, it can be super complicated too.  but i also think the newer you are, the less the subtleties will be noticed.  i remember adjusting the saddle a few mm up/down/forward/rearward for my wife and kids' bikes.  no one ever noticed! :-).  ok, maybe my son appreciated me raising and moving the seat a bit when he was growing like a weed :-)

as for dropping the saddle, i went through something similar when i got my gravel bike 2 years ago.

i thought i knew my measurements after years of road riding and transferred them fairly closely to the gravel bike.  but i felt just a bit sketchy on descents still, kind of top heavy despite the bike having a greater bb drop and slacker head tube angle, etc.   so i dropped the saddle 5mm.   the lowering of center of gravity, really being able to weight the outside pedal, a little more flex in the knees to absorb bumps, all made for a huge difference.  also felt more power at the bottom of the pedal stroke. 

i decided to drop my road saddle 5mm (and back a little to compensate) and same benefits!  felt a little too low at first, but within a few rides, i was setting descending PRs and even some climbing ones with the added power.   a few weeks after that, swapped to shorter stem on the road bike too and could more easily get in "puppy paws" and stay in the drops, etc.  just shows age, loss of flexibility, etc. sneaks up on us.

maybe that'll take some pressure on some of the newbie folks getting their fit absolutely right.  '

a new bike will always take some getting used to.  and if you're newish, you may not be all that set on your old fit.  give it a few rides.  if it feels off, make some minor adjustments (seat back/forward, up/down, etc) and ride a few more times and see if it feels better.  bummer is with the new integrated cockpits you lose the ability to easily and relatively inexpensively swap to a different stem.  i have a couple shoe boxes of old 26 and 31.6 stems from 80-140mm from the various mountain, road, tri, tandem bikes we've had!

To a degree I agree with you. But some people notice micro adjustments too.

I build bikes for quite a few racers in my local area, and also suggest fit changes based on what I see and their need/feedback.

Some are willing to experiment and see decent gains while others are absolutely set on a particular position and won’t change, regardless of benefit (narrower bars aiding aero)

However. I would always suggest someone new to cycling get a baseline fit before their muscles get accustomed to a potentially wrong fit, and need to be “reprogrammed”
I suggest MYvelofit because it’s easy and cheap, and it’s good enough.


Every few weeks we get a new person on this thread and asking for bike fit advice. I’ve seen a few people guess their size and order their frame. A few weeks later they proudly show of their bike and you can tell from the picture it’s absolutely terribly put together,  but yet they always say “fits me perfectly” they think that, because their fit has always been wrong and they’re programmed into it.
Sure it might work but i’m positive they’re missing out on power, climbing ability, handling and comfort . While possibly allowing the opportunity for injury.

Height and inside leg are the dumbest metrics to assess bike size, the industry needs to solve this.

I’m 178cm and ride a 52 - with a 110 stem I have long legs and short arms. If you look at a size guide they usually suggest a 54 or even a 56.

My first bikes were always purchased based from the size chart so I went with 54s - I always disliked them so sold and purchased another and another and another, always feeling like something was wrong. But I didn’t know any better.

It was only when a saw a decent fitter that I opted for a 52 and everything clicked - I actually felt like I could extract the potential.

Just to confirm I even purchased the same frame in a 52 and 54 just to experiment, and the 54 is always too big. Or in order to get it to fit, i start to encounter handling traits I really don’t like.