Dotek 140mm cranks

Unicycles and Equipment
1

These suck! Not that it really matters much now as they are indefinitely out of stock at unicycle.com.

I got mine thru www.bikepartsusa.com (sold as Bulletproof 140mm crankset) as a pair of bike cranks. I had to hacksaw and file off the spider. This took about 2 hours. The BikepartsUSA people assured me they would be strong enough to take 5 foot drops. They were wrong.

Right from the first time I put them on my trials uni the right crank came loose very easily. It got so bad that I could only ride for 10minutes or less before having to tighten up the crank nut.

The final blow was when I was riding along a narrow wall and lost control, dropping a mere 1.5 feet. This bent the left crank in towards the tyre, giving a very odd feel to every pedal stroke.

In a nutshell don’t bother with these cranks unless you are both very lightweight and ride very gently!

2

I wonder if there are multiple types of “Dotek” cranks because these don’t sound like the ones we got from John Drummond last year. Obviously you don’t use aluminum cranks for trials, but for Coker riding they seemed fine.

I brought them along on the Norwegian tour in case 125s ended up being to short. And I ended up loaning them to another rider who put on hundreds more miles on them - no problem, nice and tight. She was very thankful.

—Nathan

3

Very? Very?

Seems like they might be fine for freestyle too as long as you weren’t doing jumping spins and the like. Some might not like the flex, either.

-C

4

Not just very: hugely. Those 140s made the difference for her between being able to continue the tour or not. Others were using aluminum cranks on the tour, but personally, I used Bicycle Euro 125s and they worked perfectly.

Steel is better than aluminum. A couple of the TCUC people steel 140s that I hadn’t seen before. Scot Cooper ended up with a pair when his Montys died the big death.

—Nathan

5

Maybe there are different types of Dotek 140s. I can’t check the picture on Unicycle.com right now, as the website is down.

I also have a pair of steel 140s which came on a German 24" Pichlerrad unicycle. A little rusty, but they are indeed a nice length on a Coker.

It seems there are plenty of people with stories of their Monty cranks dying prematurely…

6

I’ve since checked the picture of Dotek 140s on unicycle.com and they are almost identical to the cranks I bought, butchered and destroyed.

7

Re: Dotek 140mm cranks

I didn’t think they were too bad for light riding- but I definitely won’t be doing big drops on them. I’m using the 125mm Doteks on my 29’er. It is squeeking a little but it doesn’t seem to be loose. I don’t think they are great but they are nice and light and shiny.

I wouln’t dismiss them entirely for fast road/ light trail riding.