White Industries has held fast to the 24mm square tapered BB standard for their classic cranks, until now. Coming this year are the new White Industries MR30 cranks, where the name means “Mountain and Road, 30mm spindle”.
It’ll have a similar preload adjustment ring as a SRAM crank, but the arms can be removed from the spindle (similar to Race Face’s CINCH design) with the included tools.
For mountain bikes, it’ll be a 1x system only, but for road they’ll have a double using their unique chainrings. They told us they’re working on the next generation of single chainrings without using any sort of narrow/wide design that could infringe on others’ patents. They’re doing that by starting with a tooth design that they originally used in 1998. It was designed as the timing ring for Devinci Tandems and had taller teeth.
Check that out and some amazing old school wide range cassettes (with a newspaper article that’s very much worth a read!), rear derailleurs and unique bikes built by Doug White back it the day…
The tooth shape is such that t engages the chain’s rollers and holds them. So far, it’s performing well in the workstand, so now they’re headed to the trail for outdoor testing.
They’ll have single rings for standard and Boost spacing, each keeping the proper chainline.
The modular design should allow you to move it from standard to fat bikes as needed. They’re shooting for production and sales to start by Interbike, but that’ll depend on how testing goes.
They’ll have VBC road double chainrings for it, too.
The VBC design automatically centers the smaller chainring with the larger and lets you pair any tooth combo you want. The arm is changed to to accommodate the new spindle, but is otherwise similar, with the road version getting a slightly narrower Q-factor. They’re still messing with how much material they can take out of the arms to save weight, but the real weight savings come from having an alloy 30mm spindle and Pressfit BB versus a square taper BB.
When ready, White says they’ll be the only US-made crankset with 30mm spindle.
Did you know White Industries made the first wide range 10-speed cassette? Neither did we, but check out the article (click to enlarge), it’s good stuff.
They also had to make a derailleur to work with it. Linear motion? That sounds an awful lot like X-Horizon!
White’s first “component” was this elasticized ankle strap to keep your pants leg outta your chain. It’s name? The Pegger.
They also made a freewheel single cog and a watch bezel.
Doug White also made a couple of bicycles, like this 20″ mountain bike.
And this Sofa Cycle, with a speedometer, headlamp and custom enamel head badge made by his wife!
Back to present day, they do continue to innovate. White was one of the leaders on the new T47 bottom bracket standard, which was all over the handmade show. Check our development story on T47 for the full scoop.
