Clearly this guy has at some point.
120 gears!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RETRO-DAWES-EDGE-PRO-18-HARDTAIL-MOUNTAIN-BIKE-UNIQUE-120-GEARS-ULTIMATE-TOURER-/253102091852?hash=item3aee0f6e4c:g:cKEAAOSw-29ZSmnB&clk_rvr_id=1304637613638&rmvSB=true

Anyone else remember when you were a kid and the bike with the most gears was the best? 10 speed beaten by 15 speed beaten by 21 speed?
Maybe this guy remembers and built the ultimate top trump gears bike.

I thought tourers were supposed to be simple and reliable?

looks to have the same (if not slightly worse) range as a normally geared 3x tourer/mtb too…

So much awsome for so little money.

I approve.

4x3x10 = 120 (may of course be duplicates)

Yes that is indeed a possibility

Pointless

I wish I had a harder gear on the SS when I spin out on the flat

Purple ano and yellow crud, brake booster and rim’s. So much going on for so little effect, I approve.

Some cargo trikes use setups like this – cassettes plus hub gears plus multiple chainrings.

Didn’t Sheldon brown have some bikes set up like this?

I tried to look up that hub to calculate what the lower gear ratio would be. However all I can find for Shimano 3 speed hubs suggest that it has a ratio of greater than 1:1 in low gear, which would render the whole thing totally pointless.

Citron rims! Bloody hell.

I tried to look up that hub to calculate what the lower gear ratio would be. However all I can find for Shimano 3 speed hubs suggest that it has a ratio of greater than 1:1 in low gear, which would render the whole thing totally pointless.

That’s hilarious 🙂

A Sturmey Archer three speed has 1:1 in the middle, with the other two being up/down a third. That would be more useful.

Nice idea!
Most of my bikes are single speed, I find them sufficient.

“CUSTOM BUILT DEORE QUAD CHAINSET 26-32-36-44”

Because the standard 22-32-44 would have been rubbish, yeah?

That was my immediate thought – though he was an amateur with only 63 gears:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/otb.html

1×10 and very rarely wish I had more gears except on very fast tarmac descents in which case that isn’t really proper mountain biking

The ultimate just-in-case-of-failure gear setup?

Even if both the rear mech and the hub gear fail, you still have 4 ratios to choose from at the front!

Where would one find purple ano cable ends.
Asking for a friend.

I rode a recumbent yesterday that had 81 gears.
It was too much IMO. just massive overkill

FYI it was a standard 3×9 setup with a SRAM DD3 hub.

how do you customise a chainset and mech to take a 4th chainring?

If memory serves, Shimano made a 4 ring crankset in the mid 90’s, though it was at the cheap end of their group sets.

Yeah, a lad next door to me when I was a kid had one, 24speed 4×6.

We were proper jealous

so near, yet so far:

rohloff x cassette x chainset x hammerschmidt

= 14 x 11 x 3 x 2 = 924 gears FTW

Can you run hammerschmidt with a normal chainset? Or are we talking a 2 chain setup?

Or…

Rohloff x eagle cassette x pinion. 2352 gears. May have some overlap. Shifter locations may be interesting…

Needs more retro direct.

My dad has a recumbent trike with 81, useful for running a reasonably close block and getting the low end you need to winch it’s ungainly bulk up hills (remembering you can’t get out of the saddle and honk).

I seem to remember all 3 hub gears were lower than 1:1, but it was Sachs or SRAM. I will be sending him a link to that bike.

That’s not a mid-90s cheap chainset though, it’s more modern than that. My first thought was a chainring bolted to to the outer ring using the chainguard fixing holes.

4th chainring adapters

http://abundantadventures.com/quads.html

and then what? standard mech with limit screw way out and an unindexed gearshifter?

Ever feel like you don’t have enough gears

No.

I love that there are people putting together builds like this though. 😀