trying to find some history on my cranks but having no luck. they are 1980 Dura-Ace track cranks with black chainring and black anodized inlay. could only find stuff on road cranks with these characteristics. any ideas/info?
You may remember me having a perve on these outside the Portland Hotel! Firstly, are they definitely track cranks? Eg; there is no flange for an inner chainring? Do you know what BCD they are?
Shimano introduced their first Dura-Ace track crank in the 1980 catalogue (which means they were probably available a bit before that), and the black road cranks existed in the late 70’s, although never featured in a catalogue as such. So my guess is that yours are just a continuation of that option.
I was going to say someone may have just painted them, but you said the black is anodised?
It’s interesting that one of the images accompanying the FC-7500 cranks on Velobase appears to be very dark:
I’ve seen a few black ano DA road chainrings, but they were on silver DA cranks.
The black DA 7600 chainrings are definitely factory, not aftermarket. I am 100% sure on this, having ordered them from Shimano several times in the past…
Those cranks…it just looks like a more matt polish/unpolished area in the pics…or painted by a mechanic…hmmm.
That image is probably misleading, Luke’s cranks look more like this, sans inner chainring:
^^ just like this. although they are definitely track cranks. no flange grinding or filing to be seen. same era of cranks as well as they seem to have the same ‘one key release’ crank bolt. I’m also aware that the black chainring can be factory but it’s more the crank that I’m curious about…
And you thought yours were rare: SHIMANO DURA-ACE 160 CRANK BMX FREESTYLE FLATLAND GT (eBay item 180609783827 end time 07-Feb-11 08:31:11 AEDST) : Sporting Goods
I have seen black 75xx Dura-Ace hubs and so on before, I would suggest there was a whole mini-group. Ihave seen a couple of the 7520 rear track hubs in black on ebay, so perhaps there was a (rare) minigroup.