epnnf

Ive been riding 3x since forever/never tried 2x. W/3x, I spend 80% of my time in the middle ring- small ring on big up hills, big ring on big down hills. Stated another way, when riding the flats, all my shifting is in the RD. But w/2x, I would think youre constantly going back/forth between the 2 rings. Also, when you shift the FD on a 3x, its = to two shifts on the RD. I would think on a 2x, a shift on the front would be = to three shifts on the RD.
Just curious!
YMMV

Black wallnut 

It depends. Too many variables to say. Flat terrain with no interruptions paired with a steady cadence results in few shifts. Stops and terrain changes that as does the riders fitness relative to the terrain. Chainset matters too. With a 53-39 I found that most the time I was in the small ring below 20 mph. False flats and persistent winds kept me there. With favorable winds and the down side of the false flat and it was mostly big ring.

tomato coupe

Yep.

HTupolev

It depends on basically everything. A 2x that leaves one rider "between rings" might instead function nicely as a "1x-plus-granny" for a different rider, even on the same routes.

As you alluded to, though, the "cost" of a front shift can also differ. Larger differences take longer to compete shifts, can be more disruptive to pedaling, and can require more compensatory rear shifting. So if a triple allows for tighter differences between rings, it's possible for shifting to feel better than on a wide-range double even if more shifting is being done.
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indyfabz

Shift happens.

PeteHski

With 2x12 road gearing I use the big ring on flats and downhills and small ring on climbs >4% gradient.

wheelreason

Depends, some folks are constantly shifting with even minor changes of grade, while others shift a lot less. Also depends on what your rear cluster looks like.

gecho

In my case no. I'm in my middle ring 99% of the time whether I'm on a 2x or 3x bike. The other rings are for less common situations, a very steep climb for the granny, or a steep decent / epic tailwind for the big ring.

big john

My rear cluster looks like a greasy mess.

On my triple road bike, 52-39-30, I can do a lot of rides without ever using the small ring. On my compact double bike I can stay on the big ring until there is a significant climb.

Maelochs

Are we talking 2x11 or 2x7? 3x6, 3x9. or 3x10? In general, if you have 9 or more cogs, your gear range in the top two chain rings will be about the same with a double or triple.

Of course ... "It depends." what gears are we discussing specifically? A 50-34-24 triple? and in back? 11-32? 48-34-22? 44-34-22? 14-34, 11-36?

If you have 50-34-24 chain rings and any sort of 11x32 (nine, ten, or eleven cogs) then you should shift exactly the same amount, with the third (smallest) chain ring used primarily when hauling big loads up steep hills.

My ancient Cannondale tourer has 48-38-28 rings. I almost always stay in the top two rings. With my Ww-093 has 50-34x11-32 gearing and I often spend entire rides in the big ring (cross-chaining is just fine because I adjust my derailleurs properly.)

So .... Yes. It depends.

Kapusta

I found myself shifting the front more when going to 2x from 3x.

With 3x, the middle ring covers a lot rolling terrain that has me shifting the front of a 2x much more often.

rm -rf

Here's typical faster cadences for fairly flat roads. Charts from Mike Sherman's Gear Calculator
11-32 in 11 speed Shimano, and 34/50 chainrings.
Big chainring in black, small chainring in red. It's easy to see how they overlap.

I'm running this with Di2, which won't allow the 34-11 or 34-12 cross chain. (On my old setup, the chain hit the pickup rivets on the big chainring -- it worked but was noisy.)
So the small 34 chainring is good up to around 18 mph before it runs out of gears at these reasonable cadences.
The 50-32 gear works but makes noise. Perhaps it's better to stay off the 50-28 next gear too. So, somewhere below 13 mph to need to shift off the big ring, although it can go lower with lower cadences and a bit of drivetrain noise.

In practice, I don't have many perfectly flat roads, there's always rolling up and down again. So the small ring is pretty good for the 15-17 mph range that I would often be riding. Fast riders would be in the big ring much more than I am.

These mph speeds all reduce a couple of mph with the slower cadences I tend to use when riding at an easy pace.

(But with my Di2 electric shifting, the front shifts are hardly more trouble than the rear ones, so I shift as needed, even for just a half dozen pedal strokes. It's so nice.)



~~~
My all-day "adventure" bike has a 30-39-52 mechanical triple, and now a 11-34 rear.
I almost never use the 52 -- usually just on long, shallow downhills.
I can use all 11 gears with the 39 middle, and that's a big range -- from fast-for-me sprints to moderately steep climbs.
The 30-34 low is fantastic for seated climbing of long, steep hills.
I do tend to shift to the 30 chainring on most hills though, I always prefer spinning up hills if possible.

rm -rf

3 rear shifts for a front ring shift on a 2x drivetrain:
Yes, that's pretty typical.

Here: slowing down at around 14 mph, in 50F-25R.
Shifting to the 34 chainring while continuing to slow, the 34-18 matches the cadence quite well. That's three shifts.

(My Di2 has a "long press" of 1/2 second or longer, that shifts 3 cogs and stops. Very useful at chainring shifts! And as the rear is shifted, it auto trims the front derailleur cage too.)

Carbonfiberboy 

Riding a 3X on group rides with 2X riders, it depends on the 2X riders' chainrings. With standard 50-34 compact gearing (or it was standard when I was doing a lot of group rides) the 2X riders shifted a lot more than I did and it was a total PITA to be behind one in varied terrain. I'm 53-39-26 in front, so like you I mostly run the middle ring with granny for long climbs and big ring descending, very seldom shifting the front. IMO dispensing with 3X was profitable for the industry, but a bummer for recreational riders who like a close ratio cassette.

Rick

Wow you gave me a headache with all that figuring ha ha. Some years ago I had a half step setup. Sometimes I think i actually had the hang of it. It was and still now about having enough range to get their. I purchased a Co-Motion Pangea Rohloff near 10 years ago. I prefer it over the half step with a triple crank. You probably could find the components to setup a half step. You would have more shifts. The shifts although challenging at first would give more useful gears. If you want monotonic gears you could setup one gear on a Schlumpf Mountain drive and seven or eight speed cassette on the back.

Maelochs

The biggest benefit of a triple is probably that on long climbs you can stay in the small ring the whole way and use the rear derailleur only.

Also, though, it is easier to learnt he crossover points with a 2x ... when you shift down up front and up a couple or few in back, or vice versa, to match revs and effort to be in the right ring for the upcoming terrain. I Can learn on a triple ... when I rode MTB a lot i had my 3x8 pretty much mastered, but I am just guessing on the Cannondale tourer.

Either way, whatever system you have learn to get the most our of it. With modern drive trains, changing gears is so simple and easy one hardly needs to think.

GamblerGORD53

I don't call them defaileurs for nothing. LOL
My old 3x8 hybrid had 30/39/50 with 11 to 30. Middle was good up to 17 mph. Going back and forth from 23 mph was nutzville. Shift to the big meant shifting the back maybe 2 spots. Plus needing to trim the front chain shover cage. LOL. And anyway 17 to 24 mph the chain is ALWAYS crossed. There is NO shifting advantage with defaileurs. The range was for sure LESS than my Rohloff14. A 2x just won't have the range, you still have a 50/11. Any 1x is LAUGHABLE unless you are on the gravel tour divide maybe.

With my SA 5w at 44 to 112 GIs, I give up some low end to keep the 40+ mph high and have gear 3 shift at 14 mph. Every little down slope I'm in 4th going 18- 24 mph.
City cruising up to 14 mph in 2nd is SIMPLE. If I want a fast jump start 44 GI can do that. I do maybe 20% of the shifts that defaileurs made me do.

Atlas Shrugged

It seems there is virtually no limit to what people are willing to spend for any fraction of perceived performance increase with cycling gear. I highly doubt the industry would abandon what, in your opinion, would be a highly lucrative opportunity. Due to the increased capacity of modern derailleur systems and 11-speed cassettes, the need for 3x systems has become redundant.

LarrySellerz

I think many/most people with doubles chill in the big ring and cross their chain when climbing lol.

I usually ride tripples and don't like using the middle ring on most of them.. . doesn't seem to work as well, bikes get louder. Big ring sees the most use and the small ring gets a lot of load when climbing, so the middle one sees less wear and doesn't wear with the rest of the system evenly, messes it up. Or maybe that is just a me thing but its on multiple bikes, never really liked the middle ring

PeteHski

Fortunately for most of us the industry appears to sell what we want. It’s also probably their most profitable approach. If there was a big enough demand for 3x11 drivetrains I’m sure the industry would oblige. I know there are people out there who still think 3x8 is better than 2x12, but fortunately not enough of them to influence the industry.

Garthr

Each given rider has to know what given combos work for them, and what doesn't. Just because I prefer to ride a 36/46 with a 13,15,17,20,24,28,32 7sp FW doesn't say anything about any other number of gears or rings. I ride this as it works for me as I don't need more than seven cogs. I shift between rings often as I know exactly which combo offers what in relation to the others. I have a 9sp 12,14,16,18,21,24,28,32,36 cassette with 24/36/44 rings on another bike and I find it needlessly lengthy so I only use the 14-32 cogs. Again, I know what combo = what gear and ride accordingly to the terrain. Shifting is what de-rail-ers are for... you know ... they "derail" the chain ... knock it off one rail and place it on another. It's not complicated, at least with the number of cogs I use. I don't know about more because I've never used more, nor have any need to. Again, it's knowing yourself and what works. Just because ten, eleven and twelve speed cogsets exist doesn't mean it's a good idea for me to ride them, in fact it would be foolish for myself given that I know I only need seven.

I've also ran the 13-32 7sp FW with a triple 26/44/48, which works wonderfully. While this offers a selection of gears is full and half steps, you aren't required to shift in a numerical progression. That's often misunderstood. You shift as you normally would in a give given ring and use the rings to fine tune the gearing as desired. Again and again, as with any gearing selection, it's up to each rider to choose their combos based on knowing themselves from experience. If a combo doesn't work, don't bother cursing it, it's not that combos fault(or anyone's fault) it doesn't work for you..... it's a prompting to look to what does work.

esasjl

Getting the right gearing setup for your individual circumstances is important to how enjoyable cycling can be. I'm getting old, tubbyer than I'd like to be and insufficient leisure time to get particularly fit. Combine this with very little flat ground, an interest in getting off the tarmac and the need to haul 30 kg of groceries on a Sunday morning and gearing range has become a key criterion for me. This means wide range cassettes/freewheels (e.g., 11-42 10-speed, 12/13-34 7/6-speed etc) and chainsets (51-41-30, 42-33-22 [150 crank - gain ratio], 46-26). Very little of this is available out-of-the-box so fettling and friction-shift skills are useful. I prefer the triples and see them as 1-bys with options. The wide-range double provides the range but requires a very different, and more taxing, approach to shifting patterns. A 1-by with 15% gaps would need to be 15 or 16-speed to achieve the same range.

If I lived where gradients were shallow and flats extensive then all this would change.

seypat

It depends on how often you go to the outer limits of your gearing range and how many cogs you have on back. 1 tooth jumps require more shifting compared to 2, 3, 4 tooth, etc jumps. That's the same for 1, 2 or 3X. I shift less with 3X over 2X.

Maelochs

Ummm ... Not really how business works.

Most riders can do well with a 2x system and 11 cogs. Few riders need more.

Some riders need (or want) more, but the number is not sufficient to cover the cost of production ... compared to the tiny fraction of people who will go out of their ways to find 3x systems.It is not that there is no demand ... it is that the demand is not that strong ... some riders who wish they had good 3x options (and we see them post here so we know they exist) tolerate the compromises of 2x systems ... the manufacturers don't lose the sales, even though their customers are not as pleased ... but the manufacturers only count money, not happiness.

If there were major manufacturers making high-quality 3x11 systems ... or even Ultegra-level 3x9---those riders might abandon the major manufactuters. At that point Shimano and SRAM might rethink their policies ... but right now they are not losing money because the people who Want 3x are settling for 2x./

Yeah ... there are reasons why nobody comes to see you about derailleur set-up.

There are lots of videos out there .....

seypat

And, there are people like me who's bike evolution stopped when new 3X were no longer made. Still have their 3X systems and do whatever it takes to keep them going. Microshift is keeping a lot of them going as is friction. Same for station wagons, compact minivans and small screen cell phones with all the bells and whistles. The want is still out there.