Wolf Tooth DM Oval Chainring: Customer Review

Overview

Have you ever thought to change over to an elliptical/oval chainring? Our customer Steve Deutch was skeptical at first but the Wolf Tooth direct mount elliptical chainring made him a believer. Steve weighs in on how this elliptical chainring has changed his trail riding experience. Check it out.

I must confess I did not give much thought to elliptical chain rings until my good riding friend Joel mentioned it last year. He had nothing but good things to say about them so I figured why not, I'll give it a try. Little did I know how much I would actually come to enjoy this fine piece of CNC machine artwork.

I decided to go with Wolf Tooth as their product seems to be very good quality and was not overly elliptical as some of their competitors were. I wanted some benefit from the oval shape but didn't want to go too crazy in case I didn't like it for some reason. The 30 tooth I purchased is like a 32 tooth on the power stroke, and like a 28 tooth on the recovery stroke.

Performance

For the first few minutes of riding the oval chainring things seemed a bit strange, but after that, I totally forgot the ring was elliptical and went back to riding as normal. What I did notice is on climbs my cadence seemed noticeably smoother and at high-speeds, I didn't notice anything at all which I would say is a good thing. I also felt that when pushing hard for a long period of time, even though I don't have any knee issues, the elliptical ring seems to be easier on the legs and the knees.

Final Thoughts

In the past year, I have since switched over all of my bikes to an elliptical chainring. I still find it difficult to describe how these feel and the perceived benefits but I know I'm not going back to round so I suppose that is a strong endorsement. Actually what is strange is when you go back to riding a round ring it just doesn't feel right. I would say if you are curious to definitely give it a try, it's a cheap experiment and one that I think you'll really like the result.