It can be really expensive to make a bike lighter. Carbon fibre parts or beautifully tooled metal, shaving grams can easily shave chunks of your bank account, too. Now, 5Dev is making it really expensive to make your bike heavier, too.<\/p>\n
The U.S.-based boutique component brand revealed its new \u201cheavy metal\u201d spindles for it\u2019s highly CNC\u2019d cranks today. The solid steel spindle reportedly adds a bit over 500g of weight to the BB area. 5Dev also revealed that the hefty version was originally made for Frameworks Racing, and Asa Vermette already used them for a good chunk of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n
Now, you may be thinking \u201cBig deal. My cranks are already very heavy and I paid way less for them!\u201d And you\u2019d have a point, as far as we\u2019re concerned. But 5Dev does give one advantage, in that you can also use a normal axle to remove weight from the bike when you want to, too.<\/p>\n
Strapping weight to downhill bikes is all the rage these days<\/a>. It has been for a long time, to a degree. But things like these 5Dev spindles and Orbea\u2019s weight-bearing linkage<\/a> are making it easier for us non-pro riders to get in on the action. With Jackson Goldstone notably sporting extra weight (on his bike) in 2025 and now Vermette sharing he was carrying an extra load for much of last year, the trend looks like it will continue to grow.<\/p>\n Of course, pros don\u2019t have to pay for their lighter carbon fibre frames (or custom alloy frame, if you\u2019re Vermette) that they then make selectively heavier. It\u2019s also the \u201cselective\u201d part of that that is important, as running heavier wheels will not have the same effect as adding sprung weight to a lower part of a bike. We also have to admit that 5Dev spindles are one of the cleanest ways to integrate extra weight without getting weird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It can be really expensive to make a bike lighter. Carbon fibre parts or beautifully tooled metal, shaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[180843,81835,49,48,635,180844,17741,35620,82],"class_list":["post-435221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-5dev","tag-asa-vermette","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-heavy-bikes","tag-heavy-metal","tag-mtb-gear","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}