Originally Posted by
Phil_gretz
^ @
cyccommute , I enjoy your thoughtful posts. I know that you're passionate about riding all sorts of bikes. You're also a stalwart contributor to BF discussions. But I think that your response has gone off track from the OP somewhat. He just wanted to know "why" and comes at this from a comfort/hybrid road perspective (2018 Giant Sedona). He doesn't tour, and he doesn't ride off road. I've done both, so get where you're coming from.
I, too, have had many triples, but am coming to the conclusion that they're really not necessary in most cases. I ride with a friend who is quite an accomplished cross country MTB-er, very technically sound and aggressive. He says that the XC MTB scene has (past tense) moved away from triples to doubles, and now is settling on wider range singles even. This may not apply to really mountainous riding. I just don't know. But those would be the extreme cases anyway.
The problem I see with mountain bikes is that they are being set up and marketed for rather short rides or for multiple laps on a know course. For example, I recently overheard a conversation where someone was talking about how tired he was after his “long” mountain of 12 miles. I suppose that’s long for some people but my mountain bike rides can be from 12 to 25 to 160 miles. That’s ranging over a lot of territory and involves a lot of varied terrain.
A single speed is fine if you know the area where you are riding but if you don’t know what is ahead, it’s hard to plan your gearing beforehand. The biggest failing of 1x in my opinion is that you can pick a good low or a good high but not both. If you don’t pick right, your ride can be seriously impacted.
With a triple, I can have a good low, a good high and a good middle. I read an article by one of the SRAM engineers where he said that with a single you could change the front chainwheels and completely change the character of the bike. I fully agree. Having the gears on the bike and a mechanism change between them is just a convenient way of “completely changing the character of the bike”.
But for the majority of the recreational riding and all of the competitive riding, a triple doesn't make sense. You can get useful gear ranges for any skill level with the proper selection of double chainrings and the correct range of cogs.
I believe the opposite. You can’t get a correct range of gearing on a double. You can get a high gear range or a low gear range but you can’t have both. For most recreational riders, bikes are already geared too high but most people look negatively on low gears as being “weak”...hence the name “granny gear”. Personally, I revel in having a stupid high gear and a stupid low gear.
I'm surprised that there has been pushback on my assertion that triple front/rear shifting is clumsy. There is more overlap, so finding the "next" adjacent gear takes more mental effort. The middle position is rarely as crisp as a limit shift, and there are three center trim positions. I've shifted with STIs, bar ends, triggers and grips, and I don't find the triple shifting as sure or silent as with the best STIs with a double. It's really not even close.
Typically, when people say that triple are “clumsy” they mean that they shift poorly as in slow. I’ve never found that to be a problem. I don’t see the middle ring as being uncrisp either.
I don’t use compact doubles (I’ve had some doubles in the past) but I find the gearing to have huge holes in the shifts between the chain rings. If you downshift off the large ring at 90 rpm, the pattern requires an increase in rpms to over 120 to maintain the same speed or it requires downshifting on the back 2 gears or more to get something that is only slightly off of the original gear ratio so that you can maintain the same rpm. Triples don’t require that kind of fiddling.
Finally, any weight you don't need is just...weight. I was commuting on my fast road bike yesterday morning, and some fellow passed me going uphill on a somewhat extended 7 degree incline. So, reacting, I began to apply power. I wasn't catching him and was astonished that I couldn't. Shocked. Minutes later, I arrived at work and took off my backpack, which I'd stuffed with food, lunch, laptop and other sundry items. 25 pounds, give or take. A headslap moment...right there.
I have a wide range of bikes with a wide range of weights (none over 30 lbs however). Going from a double to a triple is not going to save me much weight. My bikes would lose about 100 grams if I removed the inner ring. That’s not going to make much difference.