TESTED: Cruel Components Oval VO Chain Ring

Words and photos: Mike Blewitt

Mountain biking isn’t quite old enough for everything old to be new again, but that time isn’t far off. There are some sweet neo-retro builds hitting trails if you keep an eye out, and a few big brands have done vintage paint schemes on factory bikes for their team riders. While few of us are likely to go back to rim brakes, narrow bars and thin sidewalls with tubes, oval chain rings have come and gone a few times over the decades.

Oval chain rings are said to be beneficial in minimising the dead spot in your pedal stroke, while increasing the power in the stronger phase of the stroke. With 4 bolt chain rings you often had a few positions, to optimise the oval shape for your own pedalling. The move to direct mount chain rings means most oval rings have you set in one position. And with the Cruel Components VO series, the Italians turned it up a notch.

The Cruel Components are a double cam design, so it’s not just oval, but even more like an AFL ball shape. It’s said to be done to really optimise how mountain bikers pedal, bypassing the dead spot at the top of your pedal stroke faster. The chain rings are available in 30, 32 and 34t sizes, with direct mount options for Shimano, RaceFace, Cannondale and SRAM – plus 4-bolt options. There are different chain line options as well.

Sizing up the Cruel Components chain ring

The gold 34t Shimano direct mount model I was sent hit the scales at 69g, 16g less than a Shimano XTR 34t ring. It measures a wide 162mm at it’s largest elongation, and 132mm at the narrowest. The Shimano 34t ring is 146mm all round. The Cruel ring fitted up nicely and is very well finished – the teeth are taller than Shimano but also a little pointier.

With the cranks fitted back up, it was wild to see how much the chain moves up and down when the bike is in the stand, and I even backed off the clutch tension a small amount to reduce the extra tig I perceived as the cage moved around.

On the trail 

This is the first time I have spent any time on an oval chain ring and I found it very disconcerting at first. The deadspot passes so quickly that I could hear the disengaging and engagement of the DT Swiss Star Ratchet hub in my rear wheel. It felt like riding on a screw on cassette to an older road bike, as if the drivetrain wasn’t propelling you forward as you felt it should.

I don’t have an ideal pedal stroke, but with near on 30 years of mountain biking and cycling in general being my jam – it’s not terrible. While my first thoughts were ‘it feels like I’m vomiting through my legs’, that disappeared when moving off smooth terrain and onto the trails.

Specifically on climbing singletrack and undulating rocky terrain, I think the chain ring felt fantastic. It helps exacerbate the power stroke and get you back to it faster, which is a bonus at the typically high load and low cadences that technical climbs require. While it was still pretty good on steep and rough fire trails, as soon as the consistency of the trail surface was quite good, and therefore the ability to maintain a smooth pedal stroke improved, the chain ring felt strange again. Funnily enough, swapping between my two bikes made a normal round chain ring feel strange when I’d just been riding a bike with the Cruel oval ring.

My take

A lot of people I know really like how an oval chain ring improves their pedal stroke and their riding. I saw clear advantages on some trails, and I think for anyone who mostly drives to the trails to climb steep trails and technical singletrack before bombing back done again will love the Cruel Components VO ring. Or, commit to oval and equip all the bikes you own. Oval chain ring fans say for proper adaption to the change in pedalling you really need to be on oval all round, if you can excuse the pun. This is a well-made ring and the chain was secure for the weeks I had it on my bike – oval isn’t for me just yet, but I can see the benefits. Also, they come in black or red as well!

RRP: $145
From: bspokevelo.com.au

Hits:

• Quite light
• Improved performance on tough terrain
• Good chain security
• You don’t have to get gold

Misses:

• Aggressive double cam not for everyone