Sjtaylor

I have a couple year old Trek Checkpoint that I bought as a frame and installed SRAM Apex 1 gearing. It’s a 40 tooth in front and 11-42 cassette. It was my first frame up build and I was so excited to get that group set at reasonable price I didn’t realize the issue I’d have with climbing with that gearing. The gearing is way to high. I struggle to climb an 8% grade unloaded. That gearing will be a problem for the road trip I’m planning where I want to base camp and maybe do bikepacking or touring overnighters.

I’ve been reading and researching this and the idea so far is to buy a 38 tooth for the front (the smallest available), an 11-50 cassette and the Garbaruk replacement derailleur cage to handle the gearing range.

Has anyone else here addressed this issue or have thoughts or ideas?

Thanks.

robow

Any chance you would be willing to throw a double crank on there or are you dead set on one ring up front ? It would solve all your problems and doesn't have to be that expensive if parts sourced right.

cyccommute 

This calculator compares the two ranges. You can see that the 38/50 reduces the gear but not by much. If you could go with a smaller ring, you’ll get a lower gear at the expense of the high gear. A double...it appears that your bike came with front double...would give you a wider range but you might need a different crank.

elcruxio

He'd need a new double able (hehe) wide range rear mech too, which does not yet exist in the SRAM lineup.

An Apex 1 rear mech is a clutch mech and won't work with a double up front. On the other hand SRAM road and mountain drivetrains have different cable pulls so that's a no too unfortunately

elcruxio

On the topic in general, I haven't been able to make the 1X system work for touring. For me it's fantastic for my general use city bike as well as my mountain bike but it does not work for me with longer distances on road especially when burdened. With the high gear spacings I feel like I'm always in the wrong gear. I've only used it up to 42t rear I think but even that was too much. If one were to decide not to sacrifice the high gearing and got the 50t rear cog the spacings would be pretty darn big. My mountain bike has a 12 speed eagle and even with the extra gear the 10-50t is not really road friendly.

I now have a double on my tourer. It's almost certain I'll go back to a triple during the winter sales time. I'll keep the 11 speed cassette but for touring I think triple up front is the way to go. It's personal preference of course but a triple has been the most comfortable option for me.

Tourist in MSN

Loaded touring, you need a really wide range of gears. Low enough to climb with a load and high enough for flat ground with a tailwind. Even higher for shallow downhills is a nice addition too.

For example for ranges of gearing, I have:
- Road bike - 355%
- Rando bike - 504%
- Expedition bike (Rohloff gearing) - 526%
- Touring (derailleur gearing 3X8) - 558%

At one time I toured on 630 percent range, but I got rid of some of my highest gears to fill in a few mid range gaps.

I am in my 60s and have bad knees, I am sure that some people can tour on narrower ranges of gearing, I list what I have as an example.

If you went with the 11/50 cassette, that is a range of 454 percent.

It is a major bummer when you have an expensive case of buyers remorse, but the question is: five years from now when you look back, what do you think you will have wished you had done? You probably are looking at some expensive modifications.

jpescatore

I have a Jamis Renegade Escpade with a 38T chain ring and 11x42 in the rear, SRAM Force1.

The lowest gear is pretty much the same (maybe even a bit lower) than my 1997 triple crank Trek 520. I don't do heavily loaded touring, but on the 38/42 I can climb the same hills I do on the 520. What I gave up was a lot at the high end, but I'm not a downhill zoomer anyway and actually have long needed move away from grinding at low RPM - which I have to do a lot more when I'm on the Jamis on flat ground!

So, for my needs I'm loving the 1x approach. But what I need to carry for 2-5 day credit card bikepacking style rides is a pretty light load.

As others have commented, going from 40 to 38 up front probably won't be enough you are really going to load up and if you hit more than those 8% hills.

Trevtassie

Grab a double front, maybe a mountain 11S 30/40 and use a road derailleur.. Only issues are maybe getting the chainline right and making sure the clutch stays switched off, maybe adjust it so it's always off.

cyccommute 

You aren’t trying very hard.

Commuter bike (the bike I ride the most): 674%

Touring bike: 754%

Off-road touring bike: 720%

Road bike: 424% (my tallest geared bike)

I’m of a similar age and I have good knees. I want to keep them that way.

I agree with your calculation but would add that this is the problem I see with the 1x systems. You can have a good low or a good high but you can’t have both. The gearing can be made to match my low gear so that hill climbing is optimized but the bike spins out at roughly 20 mph. That ends up being a lot of coasting and, from my experience, coasting isn’t good for the knees. On the other hand, the 1x can match my high gear but, man that makes my (good) knees hurt!

And, while a 2x system can be made to match my range, the transition from the high to low range and back is severe, requiring several shifts to get to a similar gear from one range to the other. There just isn’t any middle to a 2x system.

elcruxio

Where have you found a 20 tooth chainring on your tourer and which crankset is it mounted to?

Trevtassie

Partner has a 20T 20-30-40 Mounted on a basic MTB triple. Brand was AMTBer. Not sure if they are around any more, I did see another brand the other day, but can't remember what it was. Had bosses so you don't need to file the bolt heads like you do with the flat aMTBer sprocket. You need to file the spider however, to clear the chain plates. She has 11-40T 9SP rear. Think that works out to be 730% Secret to making it play nice is a Side Swing front derailleur, much easier to tune.
I've got 830% on my tourer. Rohloff on the back and an ATS Speed Drive on the front. Heavy as all get out though.
I hate long coasts too, it hurts when you start pedaling again. I'd rather keep a little load on the legs to stop "lactic acid" buildup.

cyccommute 

A 20 tooth inner can be easily be mounted to a 94/58 5 arm crankset like this old Race Face Turbine




It bolts on directly without any issues. But a 20 tooth inner can be made to fit on a 104/64 BCD crank like this one




The mount for the chain ring needs to be filed down so that the chain doesn’t ride on the metal of the crank itself. I’ve done this on a number of bikes to get the lowest possible gear on my bikes. Here’s a video on doing it


It’s fairly simple and works very well.

Tourist in MSN

A Mountain Tamer can be used to install a 20T chainring on a five bolt 74mm BCD, but crankset needs to be filed down somewhat. The Mountain Tamer is a weird looking thing that allows you to put an old Suntour freewheel sprocket on the five bolt spider. I bought one years ago, it was too low for me. A sprocket smaller than 20 could also be used.
Mountain Tamer Triple adapter - LOWER GEARS for bikes of all kinds

Link above is for a triple, but they also made one for a quad.

Avid made a similar device that would allow a 20T chainwheel to be installed on a five arm 74mm crank, but the Avid did not allow a sprocket smaller than 20.
Avid Microdaptor-2 - Cogs, Chainrings and Crankbolts - Bicycle Parts at discount prices / the Buyer's Guide / Bicycle Parts at their finest! / Professional Bicycle Source / Bike Pro

cyccommute 

I’ve used both...even running a Quad for a while...both of those only work if your cranks don’t have standoffs for the inner chain ring. About the only crank that I could make them work on was the Sugino AT from the late 80s. It used spacers between the crank and the inner ring. To use them on most cranks the standoff would have to be completely ground off. That’s a lot more filing than I would want to do.

On a side note, neither of these are particularly robust. The metal at the crank isn’t very thick and both are prone to cracking. That may have been solved in subsequent models but the early models were CNC parts from aluminum blocks. Early CNCing wasn’t a great way of making durable parts.

Finally, your link for BikePro doesn’t work. That said, BikePro.com is a great museum of 90s boutique parts.

Tourist in MSN

Interesting, I found it earlier today with a google search, and it worked a few minutes before I made my post.

cyccommute 

BikePro can be a bit flaky. I’ve had the same problem. It’s a parked site...for most of 30 years parked...and can have issues.

Tourist in MSN

I was unaware that I was supposed to file down my crank until I received the Mountain Tamer in the mail with instructions. Tried it without any filing, and when I shifted, the chain dropped onto the spider, not the sprocket. I did not want to file down my crankset in the event that I might decide against the mountain tamer, so just for trying to make it functional, I made some little sheet metal ramps to push the chain further over onto the sprocket. That worked great. But, in the end I decided that a 20T sprocket was lower than I wanted so only used it for that one ride. If I had a smaller middle ring, I might have been happier with it but the middle ring was 42T, so dropping from a 42 to 20 was a HUGE change of gear ratios.



This discussion is reminding me that in storage I have an old Mighty Sugino crankset from the 1980s, with a 144mm BCD the gearing is to high to use on anything. I know that decades ago some bike shops drilled and taped older Campy and Sugino crank spiders to convert them to a triple. Perhaps that mountain tamer could be put to use on that old crankset. I suspect I would have to add spacers instead of file them off if I tried that. To drill and tap the crank would need exceptional precision, but should be doable with a drill press and some patience.

A 20T would be too small for my liking, but there are larger sprockets that fit on it, Mountain Tamer sells some of those sprockets.

Geekage

Correction: the 11-speed SRAM road and mountain drivetrains have different cable pulls. The cable pull is the same for both in ten speed, as is the pull ratio for ten and eleven speed for road, so you can use a ten speed "Exact Actuation" SRAM mountain derailleur with ten or eleven speed road shifters. Specifically, the GX 2x10 rear derailleur is pretty easy to find, and it comes in three cage lengths. Yeah, it has a clutch, but clutches do not prevent using a double.

The derailleur specifications claim a 36 tooth max rear cog, but I run mine with a 42. In fact, mine is also an Apex 1 rear shifter with a double front. If you do look into getting a front shifter, it is better- but not necessary- to get an Apex. Not a Rival, Force, Red, or even S-series. Those all work with Yaw technology front derailleurs so don't have any trim adjustment. Apex nominally has one click of trim adjustment for the large ring, so you can get away with using almost any front derailleur that fits: SRAM, Shimano, Campy, Microshift, whatever. Also note that the shifter internals are interchangeable between hydraulic and cable brakes, so you can use your existing brake lever if you can find a good deal on an otherwise broken front shifter/brake, though removing the main pin on a mechanical Apex front shifter is a bit tricky.

Or just use a downtube or bar end shifter for the front, that way it'll be cheaper and you can easily use a triple crankset vs. trying to find a subcompact road double and still not getting a low enough gear for touring. Even then, road triples usually only go down to 30T. You can go with a mountain double or triple, but then you have to deal with the different bottom bracket width and chainline.

Darth Lefty 

Apex 1 is just not for touring. You cannot get the range and the shifts. I'm a 1x convert and missionary and even I can acknowledge that. If you cram in the 46 cassette, and choose a 34 ring for the lowest reasonable gear for an average production 27-speed touring bike - which would be like 26:36... the top would be 34:11. You might not need the range people have posted here. Personally a 48:11 seems pretty ridiculous, common though it is. But 34:11 is just too low a high for a road going bike. Once you give up and allow yourself to have front shifting it gets more reasonable quick.

Aside for the megarange lovers: Lower or oddball groups don't get a lot of press. A few years ago Shimano started 11-36 cassettes for 9 speed with matching derailleurs, and the touring bikes are using them. There was a 33 speed version of XT M8000 using the 11-40 cassette. The 2x12 version of M8100 has a 26:45 bottom and 36:10 top.

Sjtaylor

Here is my hack solution. I have a Novara Safari as a donor bike. It has 9 speed Deore with a mountain bike triple and Indexed bar end shifters to change the gears. I’m going to remove the sram stuff from the Checkpoint and install the deore derailleurs, nine speed cassette and triple chainring. I’ll keep the SRAM hydraulic brakes and exempt the shifter on the right hand brake. I’ll install the bar end shifters to change the gears.

i hope this works. Maybe the sram brifter will shift Deore. Probably not.

Tourist in MSN

I do not think that 11 speed shifter will work on the 9 speed Shimano drive train.
Science Behind the Magic | Drivetrain Compatibility ? Art's SLO Cyclery

Your front bar end shifter is probably non-indexed, should work on anything because it is friction.

The rear, you might be able to make it work with an adapter. I am not going to research this for you, you would have to check it out yourself.
Shiftmate Compatibility Charts and Choices - Jtek Engineering

I think that there also is a company in asia that makes copies of the Shiftmate.

I would use cable brakes instead of hydraulic, but that is personal preference. On my Lynskey in the rear I have a TRP spyre cable disc brake, Cane Creek brake levers, bar end shifters.

If your chainstay length is longer on the new bike, you might need a few more links in the chain.

Geekage

Keep with the bar end shifters, the sram brifter won't work with Deore.

Using what you have on hand:

fietsbob

Yea other crank types with removable spacers are more practical , but I got a lot of tours done with a 24:34 low 0.7:1..

I have a removable spider crank with a 110'54 bcd combo 48,36,22..

Sjtaylor

yeah, I’m going to strip a bike I never ride. It won’t be too painful but a Trek Checkpoint AL5 with a Deore mountain bike triple seems like a hillbilly hack. That 1x11 on a gravel bike in hill country is really not suitable for a 68 year old coming back after 40 years. If I had only known.

Geekage

A triple on a gravel bike doesn't sound as bad as a triple on a road/endurance bike, and that's done often enough that there's a Tiagra triple. Heck, there was even an Ultegra and Dura Ace triple once upon a time.

I presume the Novara had a 73mm bottom bracket and the Checkpoint uses a 68mm, so you might need to find some spacers to make things work, whether it's a square taper spindle or splined, and whether it's spacers on the bottom bracket fixed cup or on the spindle.
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