Review: Race Face Era carbon fibre cranks

Race Face is approaching 30 years of making mountain bike parts on, and for North Shore riding. As part of that anniversary, the brand is launching a new carbon fibre crankset named, appropriately, Era.

With the Next SL, Race Face already has one of the lightest carbon fibre cranks on the market. With Era, Race Face aims to provide the same experience, but tough enough to span trail, all-mountain and enduro riding. Lightweight and enduro don’t always mix well, but Race Face is confident enough in Era that it’s backing the new carbon fibre crank with a new lifetime warranty.

We’ve put a good few months into the Era cranks and are, at this point, impressed with the lightweight carbon fibre parts. The added plate looks distinctive but is already doing its job.

Race Face: a new Era

The Era crankset is differs from the Next SL crankset in a few ways, as is obvious just looking at the crank. Most obviously with the new stainless steel wear plate that sits mix crankshaft. The steel plate is intended to prevent damage from footwear while also adding some impact protection from stray rocks or in crashes.

Race Face already had a more gravity-focused carbon crankset, the Next R. With Era, the brand shaves the weight down to an impressive 483 grams, even with the added steel wear plate. Since we’re counting grams, that weight includes 170 mm crank arms, boots, a 136 spindle, 32-tooth chainring and all washers and spacers and hardware required to install the crankset.

Part of the added toughness is a redesigned pedal insert, now bonded directly to the carbon layup. Race Face says this makes it the strongest and most durable carbon fibre crank its ever created and, as mentioned, is backing that claim with a lifetime warranty.

All the colours you could want

A little colour on the outside. More on the inside of the arm.

Even more booty colours for so many arm/boot combos

Details and pricing

Era also moves to a 176-mm Q-Factor (including pedal washers) for the Era cranks, intended to make pedaling more natural. The cranks have a 52-mm chainline (with a 136-mm spindle), which can be moved out to 55-mm using Race Face’s Shimano 12-speed Wide direct mount chainring.

Speaking of direct mount, Race Face sticks with the Cinch design for Era. This is both easy to use, if you have the tools, and allows riders to change spindle lengths and chainrings to make matching the Era cranks to…