Yea, I have 175 on everything; road, MTB, and tandem. My legs are used to spinning those circles.

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For certain parts stiffer is more important than lighter.

I, too, used to have trouble with my seat height. I was always moving my saddle up, moving it down a few days later, then moving it back again. My answer was that I did not have my seat high enough. AFter Ric Hjertberg did a fitting for me at the old Wheelsmith in Palo Alto, I realized that i should be running a much higher saddle. It took me more than a year to adjust, slowly bringing my seat up. But now, with my higher saddle, I am very, very happy.

Ahhh...here's some interesting thoughts related to that... Many years ago, I used to work at the Wheelsmith Inc. in Palo Alto, CA. While there, Miguel Indurains Tour de France winning time trial bike was put on display for a month at the store. Now I'm a taller rider, so I was happy to see that Big Mig did, indeed, use 180mm cranks on his TT bike. But a very interesting bit of information came to me through Ric Hjertberg (wheelsmith founder and now MadFiber wheel designer/founder) about Miguels fit... His personal mechanic said that even though Migule used both 175mm and 180mm cranks on his bikes, he NEVER changed his saddle position. At first, I thought this was ridiculous. But then, after some consideration, it started to make sense to me. So, I took my own bike and set it up just that way....so that two crank lengths could be used without altering the saddle position. I've been riding this way ever since and it is perfect. It is my opinion that we, as riders, do Not become familiar to a certain saddle position related to the lowest point on the pedaling circle, but rather that we become familiarized to a saddle height in relation to the bottom bracket center.
Here's how it works... You set your saddle as high as possible on the longest crank you are going to use, then whenever you put shorter cranks on, you will never be overextending...which is, or course, a most dangerous position to be in.
It actually aids the whole situation in that, when you have shorter cranks on, you naturally pedal faster, which necessitates a lower saddle in order to pedal smoothly.

I'm not saying it will work for everybody. But after trying it myself, I can't imagine doing it any other way.

Velloflyte: that is very interesting and I can see how it would work. I think that most people would set up their 175 cranks to the point where they had max extension and then when moving to 180's would move the seat. So if you want to have variable cranks, you would have to set seat to longest crank position and then use other lengths from that position.

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For certain parts stiffer is more important than lighter.

Thanks. Good tip, but I might be the opposite: my problem may be that I try to have my saddle too high. Ya see, about once a week, I kid myself that I can have my seat the same height as it was when I was 25, when I was more flexible.

Firstly, always good to see someone trying to come up with noval designs. That makes the world more fun.

That being said, would one need size-adjustable shoes by touching a belt mounted button? Would be nice to have it on a fitting machine though.

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I find it very difficult to see how one could have an on the fly adjustable crank length and not suffer a penalty in weight or mechanical integrity. But even if that were not the case it looks like a solution in search of a problem - especially since the Look trilobe system and several others allow length changes using simple tools.

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Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted counts.