One of a kind, Cane Creek eeWings are hollow titanium arms welded (on one side) to an oversized 30mm titanium axle. They pack plenty of unique features and look incredibly cool, but come with a whopping price tag of £1,000.

Read more: Best mountain bike cranks, single ring chainsets for all budgets

The huge arms are seriously chunky, but grab the eeWings and you immediately notice a lack of heft; confirmed on the scales at a featherweight 400g without chainring – that’s one of the lightest on test.

The two-piece construction sees the left crank arm welded to the huge hollow axle with minimal overlapping to save weight and zero overlap at all between driveside arm and axle. Instead, the eeWings bolt together via a series of interlocking sawtooth teeth in-line with the chainring. It’s a design called a Hirth joint, and looks spooky, in that if the crank comes loose it’s totally free to fall off. Workmanship is superb though, with an absolutely flush join.

An oversized 14mm Allen-head titanium bolt (cranked to a hefty 52Nm) then fixes the two pieces. This larger size means you likely won’t have a tool to tighten this on the trail, but with no movement at all, one wasn’t needed. Bearing preload is applied via a durable alloy tensioning ring, rather than a plastic one found on lots of rival products.

Initial scepticism about Cane Creek’s design coming loose (especially as the sole bolt is slathered in anti-seize, rather than Loctite) was unfounded. In fact, this is the most solid crank here, with a really stiff and direct feel when pedalling and pumping, and it’s also noticeably lightweight when spinning. It’s a reasonable assumption the beefy welded pedal eyelet will be way more durable than an alloy insert in a carbon crank if you land really hard or smash the tips on the ground (which we did occasionally) too.