Originally Posted by
pennpaul
I ride a gravel bike but it's pretty much just a road bike now since the "gravel" here is beyond my abilities.
Anyway, I have a 46/36 in the front and an 11-42 in the back. I decided to get a compact crank (50/34), but realized I probably need a longer chain now since I'm adding 4 teeth.
Is there a rule of thumb that I can use to determine how many links I need to add? When I setup the 11-42, I used the whole length of KMC chain I bought. Of course, now I'm worried that the chain is too long since I lost 2 teeth on the smaller ring.
...if your goal is to gear up a little for road use versus gravel, have you considered running a smaller cluster in the back ? You can usually do this easily and relatively cheaply. But I guess I don't really understand the goal here.