Hi,

Just been looking over some SS threads for ideas on a winter-hack, but not convinced that the legs / hill-steepness go together!

Has anyone tried keeping the front-mech and three rings, so in effect giving a three speed front a single speed rear?

Not sure if it’s even viable, but would do away with the rear components that seem to take a beating over winter. Effectively giving you a climb gear, a cruising gear and a speed gear!

I may have lost the plot, but worth an ask!

Cheers

My rear mech froze once but the front carried on working. Effectively I had what you are proposing. It was usable.

you’d need to tension the chain… so needs a mech or equivalent.

Have you thought of a dinglespeed?

No he’s thinking Tringlespeed 😉

I can’t see why it wouldn’t work if you can take up enough chain tension. One of these could probably deal with that though. http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=58&products_id=480

it could be done, but you would still need a rear mech to keep the chain tensioned, so not much point.
otoh, if you had a wide range cassette, with more space between the sprockets . . i dunno, maybe 7 would be enough.

Thanks guys, looks like all sorts of hassle with tensioners etc.
Would rather the no tensioner look, as with a tension may as well just keep a derailleur!

Even more stuff to research now

Hammerschmidt?

the white ind DOS ENO was always an interesting idea.

Is an internal gear hub an option?

SA 3 or 5 speed are both available in 135/Disc mount options I think…

some point as you could run a more mud-tolerant 8 speed chain.

My old triple Middleburn chainset that was 8 speed has been through tons of mud usage and is still fine.

It just seems a bit backward… Like, triple front gives you (normally) a 22t range. But single front, standard rear gives you up to 25T range. And you’ll need more gubbins for the former than the latter. So the only thing you gain is less gears, which might be desirable when you’re approaching it from a singlespeedy direction, but the tradeoff is a bit of weight, a bit of complexity and cost, and inferior shifting, and worse chain control.