Wolf Tooth Components Release CAMO BashSpider

 Me too!

 But do you remember the Sprocket Pocket?

 More like 1997.

 @JDFF: the original chainwheel sprocket guard came out around 1990. Just as awesome, and unnecessary, then as it is now. Wolf Tooth just needs to make it work with any chainring.

 BBG is still around.

 @BeKwik: coming from a steep and rocky area, we were happy to remove the bigger chain ring and use a bash guard back in the 90's. I still see some bent rings these days. Saying it is unnecessary really depend on where you live.

 @JDFF: Yeah. I still have my Tooth Fairy bash ring on my old Gary Fisher hardtail.

 I still have a Kooka Krankcase on my main ride.

 also ISCG mounted bash guards extent so far out and end up lowering your bottom bracket height, making it easier to bash it on rocks!

 Meant to say "direct mount". Autocorrect sigh

 @TylerG96: you'd need to choose the correct bash guard for your chainring size.

 @Porkybob: im using the one that came stock on my bike..

 Wolftooth has made these for a long time.

 Spiderless looks sick.
104bcd makes sub 32t chain rings a bodge.
Chainring bolts are the devil's work.
104 bcd chainrings need a similar amount of machining to direct mount when CNCed.
The stamped steel spiderless rings are cheap.
Better options for chain line adjusted chainrings (boost or non boost on the same crank).
You can add 104bcd spiders to spiderless cranks for backwards compatibility.
I think they make sense.

 @spudlord: There is literally nothing left to say, well done.

 This. It completely de-camos the camo.

 It is camo. That's how good it is, you can't even see it lol!

 @ridestuff: See what?

 Cranks and bottom bracket are replaceable metal, frames are plastic and forces are transferred through 3 small iscg bolts. I'm all about getting this to mount up on a new Shimano crank set

 You wouldn't. At least not if you know anything. This is for those frames that stupidly don't have iscg mounts.

 @MAtechshit: your bb shell is attached to your frame how would that not Put a huge amount of force on as you said your plastic frame. Also I thought carbon was stronger whatever. Either you crack off your little iscg mounts or you crack your bb shell not sure what the difference is. Maybe you only break your guide or tabs instead of your frame. Maybe you break your cranks bb and bb shell.

 As long as your weight is on your pedals the load is going trough less components with this bash guard. With an iscg mounted bash guard the load goes through your frame, bb , cranks and pedals

 @MAtechshit: what did you say about my frame??? Plastic!?!?!?! How dare you!

 Without the bash, the impact of a rock is still going through the cranks and BB bearings. It is just somewhat softened by grinding your chain and teeth a bit on the way instead of the bash. When I know I'm going to be smashing into rocks anyway, I'd rather the force be taken first by the bash rather than my rings and chain on its inevitable way up to the frame.

 @jimbug: with a bashring, the impact going through the BB is only against the weight of the bike (and a bit from your hands, yeah). The force against your much larger (compared to bike) body goes right through cranks and pedals. All impact on a bashguard (vs ring) goes through the frame then bb and cranks to you.

 @loganflores: What huge force? Your weight is on the pedals, which are directly connected to the cranks & thus bashring. The only force going through the frame is the weight of the bike (which will always be there no matter if the bash is frame-, BB-, or crank-mounted), not the force against the rider's weight.

 @unrooted: Yo, it's true! All the coolest shit is plastic! Racecars, airplanes, bicycles, credit cards used to buy bicycles and racecars.

Hmm, but I do have some metal credit cards...

 @Weens: or if you have iscg mounts but would rather run a bash ring... I’m thinking about it because it’ll save me $80 on an iscg mounted guard. I needed to buy a chainring spider anyway. This kills two birds with one stone. That’s money I can spend elsewhere on my build.

 Why?

 First thing I thought as well.

 Sram rings don’t come loose as often as race face, Shimano is to new give an opinion biased on observations. But I would guess it to be more than sram as well, time will tell. I don’t have a horse in this race as I like rotor cranks anyway.

 First, SRAM's direct mount, and I think some others, is a very different design than Centerlock. Raceface DM is the only one I can think of that uses the same threaded lock-ring design, but there are probably others. However, the biggest problem with Centerlock was that many many hubs had terrible tolerances on the Centerlock mount, so the rotors often were loose or became loose.

 This would help to turn a gravel bike into a commuter

 Inspired Bikes bashring

 kinda the point... there are plenty of 104bcd bashring options, but very few for direct-mount

 @just6979: so long only Zerode make pinion bash guard.

 @vitality: ok, but asking about a 104 option in an article about a direct mount setup is just missing the point.

 Doesn't help when rocks put burrs in your chain and links get stuck and your chain skips or drops. A strong chainring is nice, but the chain itself takes a good bit of the impact, too.

I had to find a good 170mm (not a 175 with the holed drilled further in) 104bcd crank (went raceface directmount with a 2x spider) for my Stumpy because on the literal first ride I got a rock-strike-induced stuck link. And on the second ride, and then my parts arrived and I started polishing the black bashring to silver by using granite just left lying around, instead of breaking chains

 @just6979: I never had those problems in over 30years riding... used to have a bash, but after finding out that the steel rings wouldn't bend, I prefer to ditch superfluos parts im favor of simple looks and less weight. But yeah... if your setup do the trick, stick to it!

 @TDMAN: Lucky you, because after 26 years of riding with a bashring, I had these problems within one single ride without a bashring/guard. Maybe my rocks are a different flavor, because they mean that a bashring is _far_ from superfluous, it's literally required to get a chain to last more than a handful of rides.

 @just6979: that's why we must adapt our equipment to our trails... and our ridding styles.

What suits me, won't suit you/others. Nobody is wright...nobody is wrong.

PS- as i've stated I rode several yeara with bash, and many more without

 @TDMAN: "Nobody is wright...nobody is wrong." So, that's why you had to chime in with "don't buy this, buy something else", implying that "this way is wrong, my way is right". I see...

 @just6979: yeah... my bad, in my defense, I can say it was my BIAS response to the product
Cheers

 It's not, really, and that's the point. With most bikes coming with direct mount cranks, and many bikes not having ISCG mounts (which are arguably the wrong thing to use for a bashguard), there was only one (*) option for a bashring on a direct mount crank, and that was Wolf Tooth's stainless bashring that only mounted to their stainless direct-mount chainrings, which only go up to 30t. Now there is a lighter and less expensive solution, from Wolf Tooth again (they're awesome!)

**Actually, there are a couple other obscure and expensive ways to get a bashring on a direct mount crank (NSB makes a SRAM-DM spider and matching bashring for Spesh's 76 BCD rings, for one), but they don't provide a Boost chainline, which means there might not be enough chainring to chainstay clearance on many recent frames, as there wasn't on my Stumpy.

 @just6979: ISCG05 mounts are great, but under strengthened in my opinion. They should be integrated into the frame, not just tabs. Just my opinion, I'm always worried about breaking mine off, or bending them, and being SOL.

 @Kramz: "but under strengthened"

That's exactly the point I was making. They're not "great" if they're too weak. Except they're not too weak for what they were originally designed for: Chain Guides, just like the name says. With a full upper and lower chain guide backplate there, it was easy to add a bashguard even if that was a bad decision.

In the rush to always make things look cooler than before, everyone jumped on the DirectMount bandwagon because bashguards on ISCG mounts were a thing, even if the mounts weren't made to handle bashes. Then everyone slowly realized that bashguard on ISCG mount was silly, so they just left them off and went back to using the tabs for just [upper] chain guides. Some companies (Spesh for one) don't even put all three tabs on some frame so you're not even tempted to put a bashguard on, andl others leave the tabs off completely. This means folks who ride where rocks are an actual thing need to either sacrifice chains and chainrings, or find aftermarket solutions (104bcd crankset-ring-bash combo, or this awesome solution).

My rarely used hardtail has a bashguard on its ISCG mounts, and it's about to come off, because the tabs are already bending. Sure it looks mildly "cleaner" without a bashring, but it looks, and is, miles "stronger" with a bashring, and I'll never have to worry about having to bend a broken bashguard out of the way of the chainring someday.

 @just6979: Yeah, the biggest problem with a bash ring is it's rotating inertia directly on the chain ring. Which you want to avoid. I don't know what the answer is, but for me, it's basically ISCG05 tabs, but built as a strong integral part of the bottom bracket, not just tabs. But then, that's probably a weight problem too. I would draw a diagram, but I don't currently have a computer.

 Pretty much this, is perfect I guess: www.sicklines.com/gallery/data/993/sl-v10-frame-iscgdetail-b.jpg

 @Kramz: adding 100 grams to the crank at about 10-12 cm from the axis is _nothing_.

What exactly is that (minimal) additional intertia harming? Can't accelerate the cranks fast enough to keep up with the cadence changes when you dump 4 gears on an Eagle cassette? The mass of your legs alone is a much much larger factor regarding any inertia in the crank system.

We're not talking about adding multiple kilos to the crank, or adding hundreds of grams at 30-40cm from the axis of a wheel (like a DH tire vs trail tire, or an insert in a trail tire), which many people feel is a worthy trade-off for some riding conditions/trails/styles. A bashring vs a bashguard changes the rotating mass in a very negligible way.

That beefy ISCG below is great, but still doesn't help the fact that all the rider's weight still goes through the BB and frame. That means that even though those tabs are less likely to break off, the entire BB area needs to be much more impact resistant, and thus heavier, than a bike designed to take a bashring and let the cranks handle the impacts directly.

 What was it about the other circles that were slightly bigger than the circle you already had on your bike that you could not stand the sight of?

 @warmerdamj: most of the other ones i've seen are just made out of ugly plastic, i still prefer normal bashguards but at least these ones look ok