Off-the-peg fixed-wheel bikes usually come with fairly decent but unexciting square-taper chainsets. This Miche Pista (Track) chainset is a step higher up the ladder – and it certainly looks the part.
It’s square taper too, so is an easy upgrade. Miche make a matching Primato bottom bracket (£13.99) and it will fit any other 107mm-width ISO square-taper bottom bracket.
The anodised aluminium chainring is nice and chunky, in part because it’s 1/8in wide, and our sub-11 stone testers couldn’t detect any flex in the forged aluminium cranks.
The five-arm spider has a bolt circle diameter of 144mm and the Pista’s off-the-shelf options are: 165mm cranks with a 48-tooth chainring, 170mm/49T, 172.5mm/50T or 175mm/51T.
There’s logic in having a bigger chainring with longer cranks, since the longer arm gives more leverage and makes the gear feel about the same. Plus, bigger riders are usually more powerful and are more likely to want a bigger gear.
We picked the 165mm/48T option since it still yielded a big enough gear and the shorter crank arms are more ‘spinnable’ when you’re pedalling propellor-legs fast.
Aftermarket Primato rings sized 46-53T are available for about £36 each. The whole chainset weighs 613g.