DaveSSS 

A typical 1x MTB has 520% range. My 2x road bike with a 46/30 crank and 10-36 sram 12 speed cassette has 552% range. By changing to a sram 10-44 cassette with the addition of a Wolf Tooth road link, I now have a 30/44 low gear that's a bit lower than a 36/52 and the range is 675%. The only other tricks are to size the chain to wrap the big ring and next to largest sprocket - a 38T - and use sequential mode to avoid shifting into the big ring and 44T sprocket. To go even further, an extended capacity RD cage from cycleschinook.com with a 2 inch longer chain allows the big/big to be used without the sequential mode. I have that setup on two bikes.

jaxgtr

jeez that is some massive amount of range. Should allow you to climb vertically.

base2 

What is wrong with a CS-RK3 mated to a 42/11-42 or a 46/11-46 Chainring/cassette combo for 679 or 743% respectively? As long as your biggest cog is no bigger than your chainring, the 1:1 input ratio is respected you bottom out at ~21 gear inches and there is no need to run any component out of spec. Can be done with a $60 XT derailleur and convert your road shifters with a JTek Shiftmate or a Wolf tooth Tanpan. 21-155 gear inches ought to be plenty for most uses.

There is also the perennial favorite of running a Rohloff with a Schlumpf Drive of some variety for 860-somethin'% with ~15-134 gear inches. Or in hybrid style with a double crank set and any ol' derailleur that tickles your fancy.

Sure beats replacing $500 cassettes and proprietary flat top chains with any regularity.

Troul 

a Classified Powershift + cassette + x2 crank might make having for a more efficient corn cob.

terrymorse 

What kind of climbing are you doing that would require a 30/44 gear on a road bike?

I don't think I could go fast enough to stay upright in that gear.

DaveSSS 

The 30/44 is currently lower than I need, but the change from a 30/36 to a 30/38 has been helpful on 13% grades. I'm 70 years old now and I like to climb my steepest grades without being forced to get out of the saddle. I can use a 30/24 or 30/28 of if I want to do that for a mile. Just this year, that's become a lot more difficult. I'm trying to avoid the electric assisted alternative.

The 30/44 produces a speed of 4.3 mph at 80 rpm. That's a lot better than high torque grinding away at 65 rpm with a 30/36. My replaced knees thank me. I've logged over 29,000 miles on them.


As for the price, the latest sram 1251 cassette is priced at $127 and a Wolf Tooth road link is about $22. It's cheap and ,more importantly, it's totally modern. https://www.biketiresdirect.com/prod...UaAuzUEALw_wcB

You can still get a long lasting flat top chain for $35, but some sources want $50.

PeteHski

I can balance okay riding a 30/50 gear on my mtb. My lowest road bike gear is 35/33 and I find that very marginal for the steepest road climbs. I don’t think it’s very efficient when cadence involuntarily drops to 60 rpm or less on 20%+ ramps.

Roglic ran a 44//44 gear on the Giro mountain TT, which is super low gearing relative to his superhuman W/kg. 12% average gradient with a max of 22%. Thomas appeared to be labouring on his more conventional pro level gearing (39/32)

tomato coupe

Classic gearing tradeoff -- the wide range comes at the expense of large (10-19%) gearing jumps throughout the range. Not for everyone.

DaveSSS 

You can't have your cake and eat it too. I wanted to try a wide spaced 1X cassette just to see how it worked on the terrain that I ride, where there's very little flat - I'm nearly always going up or down, even if it's just 1-2%. So far, it really works well. Compared to a 10-36, you lose the 12T, but sprockets 13-32 are all the same, then it goes 32-38-44 instead of 28-32-36. On the big ring, my 46/38 has a better chain line and helps reduce shifts to the little ring. The 10-11-13 are strictly descending gears. The 46-13 will take me up to 28 mph and that requires a big tail wind if there's no slope to speed me up. The 12 never sees much use on the 10-36. It also makes me curious about Shimano's 10-45, but that requires a microspline freehub.

The microspline cassette can't be adapted to my Bitex 312 hubs, so in that respect, SRAM certainly works better. An XDR freehub works with an XD mountain cassette, just by adding a 1.85mm spacer.

Canker