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  • 2 gears for commuting….what do you reckon?
  • dooge
    Free Member

    Hey all,

    I was digging around and found some old photos of something I had made up. It is essentially a nylon ramp between a 11/12 tooth and 14/15 tooth to enable you to have two gears. I made it as I was running the bike single speed but wanted a bit more flexibility for the hills and dual carriageways.

    It is a bit of a bodge, but worked as it was simple. It used a road mech, which helped keep tension on the front and shifted using a left hand shifter as this pulled further enabling a less steep ramp up. It wasent as reliable as a normal shifter but worked 90% of the time, cost next to nothing and was a bit of fun!

    Most people might think its a bit pointless, but I found it useful. I just wondered what people thought of it!

    Posted 14 years ago
    epicyclo
    Full Member

    Neat mod. Nothing better than a home brewed solution 🙂

    I’m less interesting – I use a S-A 3 speed hub to do that job.

    BTW did you know you can still get a 2 speed hub gear?

    Posted 14 years ago
    bigrich
    Full Member

    you could get a 9 speed casette on there with a minimum of fuss, your running a shifter mech and cables, so why limit yourself to 2 gears?

    Posted 14 years ago
    shoefiti
    Free Member

    My bike has 27 gears and uses a mech also – plus it works 100% of the time – draw your own conclusions.

    Posted 14 years ago
    STATO
    Free Member

    I run 2 gears on my commuter, tho you have to undo the rear wheel nuts to change ratio so its not exactly quick 😆

    Campy record with 39-42 and white-ind dos-eno 16-18, give a nice 42/16 for commuting and 39/18 for hilly or offroad rides.

    Feb11th
    IMG_0043

    Rich.

    Posted 14 years ago
    IanMunro
    Free Member

    It’s always great to see people being inventive and making things.
    Though in this case I can’t help but think the logical progression would be a normal cassette 🙂

    Posted 14 years ago
    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    I saw a letter once in the CTC magazine from a weirdy-beardy sort who’d modded his bike via use of a hub gear AND a full derailleur set up to give him 75 useable gears.
    God only knows how he knew which was which, I think I’d prefer 2, it’d be a lot less confusing!

    Posted 14 years ago
    miketually
    Free Member

    I saw a letter once in the CTC magazine from a weirdy-beardy sort who’d modded his bike via use of a hub gear AND a full derailleur set up to give him 75 useable gears.

    Sheldon Brown had done that. In fact, I think his gear calculator will allow triple chainrings with a cassette and hub gears to be entered.

    There used to be a veg box scheme here that delivered using a recumbent cargo trike. That had a triple chainring, cassette and hub gear so that it could use silly-low gears for going up hills when fully loaded.

    Rohloff + triple + ten speed cassette = 420 gears ratios! (Though, not all usable.) I’d rather have a 2 speed.

    Posted 14 years ago
    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    Rohloff + triple + ten speed cassette = 420 gears ratios!

    Couple in all the settings for front and rear suspension set up, maybe throw a geometry change or two into the mix and just imagine the faff potential with that!! 😉

    Posted 14 years ago
    miketually
    Free Member

    Couple in all the settings for front and rear suspension set up, maybe throw a geometry change or two into the mix and just imagine the faff potential with that!!

    But, but, but… more gears = better!

    😉

    Posted 14 years ago
    samuri
    Free Member

    Just keep it in the hard gear all the time. It’ll make you stronger and earn you hero points with the other weirdies.

    Posted 14 years ago
    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    Many years ago when MTBs were still 7 speed (ie 3 x 7 = 21), Dawes(?) did an “MTB” with 24 gears via a weird 4-ringed chainset and a 6 speed block obviously selling it via the more gears = better mantra. Some kid turned up on a club run one day with this bike and God he never stopped banging on about it, how his heap of gaspipes was better than our bikes cos it had 3 more gears.

    The fact that it weighed about 38lb clearly hadn’t put him off (this was in the weight weenie days of the early/mid 90s when people used to file down their SPD pedals to save weight…!)

    Posted 14 years ago
    IanMunro
    Free Member

    You use to be able to get a quad adapter/ alpine adapter (my memory’s vauge on the exact name), which allowed you to bolt on an extra chainring on the front. I so wanted wanted one of them. Of course this was pre-microdrive, when 28-28 was considered a decent granny gear 🙂

    Posted 14 years ago
    dooge
    Free Member

    At the time I was a skint student and the idea of buying a cassette and a semi decent chain were beyond me! Also, I reckoned at the time the width of the cassette would have made the chain jump off the front more.

    To be anal as well, it was lighter than a full cassette 😀

    Posted 14 years ago
    anotherdeadhero
    Free Member

    I’m running two speed at the moment becuase I’ve not got round to changing the rear mech cable, so I’m just using the big ring or the inner ring, one gear for hills, one gear for the flat.

    I kinda like it. I might bodge up my other commuter like it.

    Posted 14 years ago
    therealhoops
    Free Member

    I toyed with doing this but ended up sticking a 9sp on. It’s turned my commute into something much more versitial.

    Posted 14 years ago
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