In pursuit of weight, most modern mountain bike chainrings are made from alloy. The problem is that alloy chainrings tend to wear out pretty quickly, which you’ll first be alerted to when your bike starts dropping chains.
Steel is a much better choice for drivetrain wear items like chainrings and cassette sprockets, but of course it does add weight. Using Race Face as an example, its steel direct-mount chainring is more than double the weight of the alloy version (154g vs 68g), which is a significant penalty.
With this conundrum in mind, Race Face embarked on a project to create the ultimate chainring that could be both lightweight and durable. The result is the brand new Era, which might just be the most high-tech chainring we’ve seen up close.
Race Face Era Chainring
- Weight: 84g (32T)
- Price: $299 AUD
Joining the Era crankset, wheelset and handlebar, the snazzy new Era chainring is the newest component in the Era family. This product range is all about combining premium performance with maximum durability, and the Era chainring certainly subscribes to that philosophy.
Of course Race Face already produces chainrings, which are either made out of alloy or steel. The Era takes quite a different tactic however, combing alloy, stainless steel and carbon into a single structure.
The concept behind this is pretty straightforward. Alloy is used for the crank interface, carbon is employed for the central spider, and stainless steel forms the outer ring and chainring teeth. The way these materials come together is less straightforward, with Race Face drawing on the proprietary compression and co-moulding processes it developed for the Era crankset.
Bonding these three materials together isn’t easy, especially in such a high-load and high-wear application like a chainring. It appears those clever Canadians have cracked the code however, and the Era is the latest component to benefit from that engineering prowess.
A little heavier, but five times more durable
We’ve got our dirty paws on a 32T chainring, which weighs 84g on the workshop scales. That’s slightly heavier than the alloy equivalent (68g), but a lot lighter than the steel option (154g).
By utilising stainless steel teeth, the Race Face Era chainring is claimed to offer five times the lifespan of a comparable alloy chainring. That’s a massive improvement, and it goes a long way to justifying the difference in price between the Era ($299 AUD) and the current alloy direct-mount chainring from Race Face ($119 AUD).
In fact, by the time you replace five alloy chainrings (totalling $595 AUD), the Era works out to be half the price. Believe it or not, that actually makes it the cheaper option in the long run.
Race Face Era chainring options
While it all sounds positive, one of the main downsides of the Race Face Era chainring is the fact that it’s only produced in a Cinch-compatible design. That means it’s manufactured specifically to fit onto Race Face cranks such as the Turbine and Era, which will be a bit of a bummer for riders out there currently using SRAM or Shimano cranks who might want to upgrade to an Era chainring. We’ll have to wait and see whether Race Face will introduce other options in the future.
For those who do own a Race Face crankset, the Era chainring will be available in 30, 32 and 34T sizes. There’s a specific version for Shimano 12-speed chains and a narrow-wide version that’s “compatible with all other modern 10, 11 and 12S drivetrains”. You’ll also be able to get each option in a standard offset (Direct Mount) and a 3mm offset (Direct Mount Wide).
