Soo.. who else is switching from 2×10 back to 3×9 / 3×10??

Aye, I’d agree with njee20 there. TBH if either of the big 2 made a quality 11-36 9 speed cassette, I’d be sticking with that but they decided to make it a 10-speed exclusive 🙁

Yep, agree with that. No specific desire to use 10 speed per se, it just offers the most versatile ratios.

Hi guys,

How about you ride / push up helvellyn / snowdon / cadair idris etc or a lot of the munros – say do it with a heavy pack or on day 3 of a 5 day hut to hut ride – i guess a lot of the 1x N brigade would secretly like a wee 22/ 20 T granny…

I am a fit climber and if i was just doing trail centres or racing i would use 1 x N I am sure – a double 22/32 mostly suits me fine with the 42 serving as a spiky bashguard…

a quick and i mean quick 23 year old i ride with has now got a double set up for when he rides with us… he just cannot push the 34 / 36 T single he uses….

up to the rider / terrain to dictate etc – gears are good !

Yes, it’s personal, for the riding you do and your fitness level more than one ring is necessary. No need to get so defensive and comparisons to other riders of any age are pretty meaningless.

How do these threads drag on?!

too many people who know everything njee…

I’ve got….(whisper it)…..
a triple on my road bike.

snowpaul – I wish you could still get 20T granny rings as I hate large cassette sprockets and the excess chain and increased chainslap in the smaller sprockets when descending that comes with running them.

20/36 & 11 -28 8speed cassette would be ideal for me, have no useable cross over gears, be as light as 10speed XT for 20% of the outlay but far more durable/reliable.

How about you ride / push up helvellyn / snowdon / cadair idris etc or a lot of the munros – say do it with a heavy pack or on day 3 of a 5 day hut to hut ride – i guess a lot of the 1x N brigade would secretly like a wee 22/ 20 T granny…
I am a fit climber and if i was just doing trail centres or racing i would use 1 x N I am sure – a double 22/32 mostly suits me fine with the 42 serving as a spiky bashguard…

Much as I’d like to go on big rides like that, I don’t because I’m at the opposite end of the country and too short of time. I only race or ride trail centres a few times a year but I’m out twice a week on average. For the riding I do 1×10 works. For the riding you do, it doesn’t. We are all individuals!

If you hardly use the 42t I’d get rid of it – when I broke my ankle my plastic bash gave me a pretty bad graze which healed slowly under the cast. I hate to think what the injury would have been like with chainring teeth involved… But it’s a personal choice of benefit vs risk.

snowpaul – I wish you could still get 20T granny rings as I hate large cassette sprockets and the excess chain and increased chainslap in the smaller sprockets when descending that comes with running them.

5-arm cranks and you can. Middleburn must do some.

njee20 wrote:

If I was building a trail bike I’d probably go for a 28/40 double, a 32t single would annoy me as I often ride 15 miles on the road to get to the trails,

mrmo wrote:

Would i go single? at the moment no, when i ride off road i have a fair amount of road sections and a 30something ring is IMO simply too small for that. But if i was building a pure race bike then i would drop the size of the big ring a bit to make it more versatile offroad.

Just as a balance, I did a 75 mile road day on my MTB a couple of months ago between Kinlochewe and Ullapool. Wasn’t racing, was carrying 20Kg of stuff. Wasn’t the fastest 75 miles anyone has done, but the gears were not the thing holding me back. Tagged along with a roadie for a few miles as well, didn’t feel under geared following them, even blasting down short hills…

AFAIAA 32×11 can get you to at least 25mph without crazy spinning. If you are doing more than that for longer than 5 minutes on a flat road on a MTB, maybe give Team GB a call 😉

snowpaul wrote:

How about you ride / push up helvellyn / snowdon / cadair idris etc or a lot of the munros – say do it with a heavy pack or on day 3 of a 5 day hut to hut ride – i guess a lot of the 1x N brigade would secretly like a wee 22/ 20 T granny…

If you can’t do it in 32×36, chances are a couple smaller granny gears aren’t going to make a big difference. I find carrying stuff up steep paths in the highlands, not only the gradient is hard, but also the surface is tricky. The added weight plus all day effort means you are far better and more efficient just walking it, rather than trying to crank and finesse a bike + kit over washed out, boggy, rocky, steep path. Daytrips / half day jaunts are a different thing.

Yeah, Njee, I know that would work but I love the stiffness of Saint cranks.
Could go Profile 3-pc with 5 bolt spider but IME they never run perfectly straight, aren’t the best BB Design for muddy use and even with a Ti BB axle would be heavier.

Perhaps it would be easier to see the differences/similarities in ratios if we used a common accurate language to express these ratios?
After all 1×10 gives quite different final ratio spread to 3×9 depending on cassette/wheel selected.
I would gladly sit and post all the charts for you but I’m simply not that interested.

Fwiw: (yes I see the irony of this) 22/36:11-32 on a 26in wheel gives me the flexibility to ride everything so far, Trail, DH, Alps to local xc hacks (although I miss my 36:16 26in singlespeed since it was nicked)

AFAIAA 32×11 can get you to at least 25mph without crazy spinning. If you are doing more than that for longer than 5 minutes on a flat road on a MTB, maybe give Team GB a call

If you sit at >100rpm yes, you can. But a 36 means you’ve got something in reserve at a sensible pace. I want to get the road bits done as quickly as possible to get to the fun bits!

Do people still pedal downhill in the UK?

try a little research…here & here. then come back and we can all talk like grown ups.

Just did. The figure for the lowest gear in each is totally different, 16 compared to 19, comparing my old 26″ 3×9 to my new 29″ 2×10.

I heard also that when you go 29, you lose a gear. So a 34 at the back becomes more like a 32.

I think some of the differences between folks on this thread boil down to whether they race or not. Many trail riders don’t really understand the obsessive gear dilemmas xc racers have.

It’s a long time since I raced xc and had 3×8, which suited me just fine. I couldn’t tell you what the ratios were, nor did I care – they were what came in the bike. Having said that I was always a mid-pack sport rider at best.

I now just trail ride with the occasional DH race: on the trail bike I have 2×9 & on the DH bike I have 1×9.

I simply don’t get why everyone jumped on the 10 speed bandwagon so enthusiastically. I’m now on 9 speed because that’s what my bike/groupset came with – it wasn’t a conscious choice, I just bought what was available. I went 2×9 because I like the clearance a double and bash gives me.

seemingly every other day someone is selling their 9 speed gear setup because they’ve discovered that 10 speed is n% better. It’s just not. Your brain and legs will adapt to whatever work and compromise you’re asking them to make by having 1 less gear. It’s marketing balls, and if you do some soul searching then you’ll agree.

Yep i agree with that.

nikk – Member
I find carrying stuff up steep paths in the highlands, not only the gradient is hard, but also the surface is tricky. The added weight plus all day effort means you are far better and more efficient just walking it, rather than trying to crank and finesse a bike + kit over washed out, boggy, rocky, steep path.

Point taken – but I actually enjoy “trying to crank and finesse a bike + kit over washed out, boggy, rocky, steep path“. 🙂 In fact, I’ve sometimes found that the extra weight of kit over the back wheel can improve traction so much that some otherwise un-rideable stuff “goes”. Mind you, I don’t seem to suffer the gear set-up problems that many on here do and the extra few ounces, on a loaded bike, seems fairly moot.

Having ridden 44/32/22 11-32; 36/22 11-32; 36/22 11-34; 32/22 11-34; 32t 11-34; and 32t 11-36 in the last couple of years, I can extrapolate that 34t 11-42 (1×11) would be great! Just that bit more on the top and the bottom. And in an ideal world you’d be able to easily swap the front chainring, smaller for epic rides, long races or winter mud, bigger for shorter rides/races.

I heard also that when you go 29, you lose a gear.

It makes the gearing slightly taller, you don’t lose a gear as such!

I can extrapolate that 34t 11-42 (1×11) would be great!

Oh well, Mr SRAM agrees with you!

You imagine wrong, as Ben Thomas managed just that! Kielder isn’t representative of most racing anyway.

Oops, didn’t realize that.

Certainly as far as the SRAM stuff is concerned you have a good choice of fronts as far as the produced ranges go; and you can put pretty much any 10 speed cassette you want out back.

The ‘long’ RD’s will cover an 11-36 quite happily.

TBH; with 28/42 and 11-36 to play with, you’re so close to having the range of a standard triple on 11-32 it’s hardley worth getting the calculator out, carrying less metal and you’ve done away with the fudgery that is the middle ring shift on a triple. You’ve also improved your Q factor as you’ve actually got a genuine double crankset instead of taking your big ring off and sticking a bash on it, thereby missing out on the pedal spacing advantage.

I’m not sure I’d chuck a decent 3×9 or 2×9 away for 2×10; although it’s a very tempting option if you’rebuilding or needed to renew anyway…

It was getting rid of the triple front shift and narrower pedal spacing that sid it for me.

I guess like everything else about bike set-up; it’s personal.

There’s lots of kit out there and no reason you need to use the same as everyone else!

Having been riding round the highlands towing a trailer full of two folks camping kit I certainly have a need for a 22 granny ring – I spent an hour or so in that on one climb alone.

22 / 34 granny is slightly quicker adn easier than walking for me. 36 / 11 top gear gives me 25+ mph – fast enough for me to pedal to offroad.

I like to ride up hills and am happy to freewheel when i spin out

I remember racing in the Pentlands in the 90’s with a 22/34/48 setup and people were laughing at me before the race. The 22 was seen as a bairn’s gear. This bairn’s gear saw me ride past folk walking up the grassy slopes later in the race. Loved the 22t.

I have been using 1×9 11-32x33t for a while and recently went to 1×10 with a 11-36x32t and find myself spinning out easily on the flats with the 32t. I am crap at spinning but regardless of that problem.. I would benefit on rides with other folk pushing 42/32 10spd setup’s if I had a 34t on it. However,I am not strong these days so I choose to go for the 32t up front with the 11-36t to help me elsewhere on the rides around here. The shifting on one side only with no extra rings/front mech etc sways me towards this combo more than the 3×9 or 3×10 route regardless of sorting out the problem of keeping up on the flat tracks/faster descents. It’s not an issue if I’m not racing.

1×9 with 33t x 11-34t felt a good all rounder too but everyone’s different so it’s pretty meaningless to go spouting what is right or wrong unless we know power outputs etc. Having said all that,I do like the 3×10 on the 140mm travel bike. Jumping between 32 and 42 while roughly in the middle of the cassette is really nice.

Would never go back to 22/32/44. Not strong enough.

Do people still pedal downhill in the UK?

yep. that’s why I have a 46×11 as a top gear.

I pedal uphill too, hence the 22×34.

I don’t ride with folk using 1×10 or 2×10 as I get bored waiting for them.

The two 2x systems I’ve had personal dealings with shifted like crap on the front. One was an improv 9 spd system, the other a purpose built SRAM 10 spd set up. Both owners were happy but I would not have been.

yep. that’s why I have a 46×11 as a top gear.

35 mph and you are still pedalling? 25 mph is enough for me.

I don’t ride with folk using 1×10 or 2×10 as I get bored waiting for them

🙄

Unless you are Nino Schurter you’ve just not found the right people. More to speed than gear ratios!

1/9 with a 32 chainring and a 11/34 cassette works well on my HT. it would not work on my FS because it climbs brilliantly seated but not that we’ll standing. So I have 2/9 on that.

Dunno where you get your figures from TJ but 35mph+ is perfectly achievable with 36×11

reakon GW? On 26 inch wheels? – thats one heck of a cadence and well faster than I can spin I top out around 30 mph on 36 / 11 . In that case what speed is that chap above pedalling on his 44 / 11 top gear he needs?

we’re not talking about spinning on the flat tho

36 x 11 @ 120RPM = 30.4mph

120RPM is pretty god damn fast pedal turnover speed. Not sustainable in my book except for short sprints.

I can hit 30+ mph on the MTB down hill on a top gear of 36 / 11 but have been told on here repentantly that that is impossible so put 25 to avoid arguments. FAIL! 🙂

138 cadence easily achievable….AWESOME

Aye and 120rpm isn’t even that fast, BMX racers pedal their bikes to 35 on the flat hitting 170rpm.

What’s your highest cadence Al?

I shall do some cadence testing on my commute…

dunno Gary, I am a spinner tho, and ride ss now and again, so I doubt it would be slow. Never had a meter for it. TBF 120-140 wouldn’t be a problem.

No need Chief

138 cadence easily achievable….AWESOME

not as AWESOME as your arithmetic.

pedalling at 120 rpm gives over 35mph with a 26×2.4″ tyre

On various bikes I have, 1×9, 2×9, 2×8 and s/s and what really pisses me off is when I want to change set-up I can never find the right size/length chain in the spares box 😐