Until now, if you’ve been running a Campagnolo or SRAM carbon crankset and been wanting to get your hands on a Stages power meter, you’ve been out of luck. In their original design, Stages hadn’t been able to accurately read power from carbon cranks because of temperature problems when the carbon heated up, and the difficulty of bonding the sensor to the carbon arm.
But now, all those troubles are in the past. New strain gauges and other technological steps forward have allowed the US company to finally introduce options for Campagnolo Super Record, Record and Chorus crank arms, as well as FSA’s SL-K Light crank.
On top of that, they’ve also released their own crank arm (essentially a re-branded FSA arm, as the two companies worked together on development) that will work with SRAM cranksets using one of three different axles. That means you’ll be able to use the Stages crank with SRAM Red and BB30 compatible cranksets, providing you choose the correct axle, or it’s compatible with FSA’s BB386EVO as standard.
On top of that, Stages have also re-vamped their power meter enclosure and reduced thickness by 3mm (it’s now 5mm rather than 8mm, since you asked). The importance of this is it increases frame compatibility, as it means there’s more room for the crank arm to pass the chainstays on bikes where it was previously impossible. The battery cover has also been redesigned with durability and waterproofing in mind, which is good news for anyone who had issues with the previous version.
The FSA and Stages arms are all due to land in the UK in January while Campagnolo fans will have to wait until February to get their hands on one. Campag cranks will come in 170-175mm versions, and FSA and Stages in 165-175mm.
We also asked Stages about a possible dual-sided power meter in the future, and were told that although they’ve looked into it they believe that their system works well enough, and a double-sided system would be significantly more expensive, which means it’s not being seriously considered as an option right now.
