Originally Posted by
fietsbob
Have a Mountain Tamer Quad adapter, tried it and set it aside 20 years ago
will sell .. had a 46,36,26,16t setup.
realistically below a certain ratio only a trike can take advantage of like a 10" gear
because you fall over on just 2 wheels..
or cannot get the 2nd foot on the pedal because all the momentum goes away, restarting on a hill
It's not that difficult to balance on a 2 wheel bike with zero forward speed. I track stand all the time at stopsigns and stoplights. I also owned one of the Mountain Tamers with a very similar gear ratio and had zero problems using it while mountain biking. Starting on a hill and on loose ground is always a problem for mountain bikers but it's not impossible.
There were a couple of problems with the Mountain Tamer that don't have anything to do with staying upright while pedaling. It just wasn't up to the torque requirements and tended to break where it was bolted to the crank and it required cranksets that didn't have posts for the third ring. And fitting one to a crank wasn't that easy. Modern cranks don't usually have forged posts for the 3rd ring but in the heyday of the Quad Tamer, this wasn't the case. The advent of indexed front shifters has further eroded the market.
The quad was further killed by the advent of chainrings below 24 teeth. Suntour made the MicroDrive which could be used with an 18 tooth inner. Most modern mountain bike cranks can be fitted with a 20 tooth ring. Most people think it's limited to a 22 but it isn't. It's just hard to find 20 tooth inners for the 64mm BCD cranks.