oh, your probably ultegra fd made for triples is apparently not as forgiving as the lower triples from this era of 9 and 10 speed for working well with diff cranksets, but you can do searches to confirm or deny this. (Im thinking of going a lot smaller of a triple, like a mtb triple) but then also get into shifter issues
That's one of the things I'm afraid of. My feeling is this generation of 3x10 was basically made for endurance road cycling, not touring. And it's the end of the line for Ultegra-level triples - IIRC compact doubles were gaining momentum around this time. So there's really nothing else that's compatible.
can you easily move the fd down if you go with a. smaller crankset?
does this bike have the fd clamped onto. tube or one of those braze on things? This may limit how much wiggle room you have to lower the fd.
The FD
is a clamp-on, so it can be lowered. The question is now... how much do I invest to try to keep this all going? I'll be buying used old tech to do it. I'll ping my fave mechanic to see if he's up for the challenge.