Front derailleur on a trike - anyone remove theirs?
A few days ago I was crawling the net for ideas about modifying my ICE Sprint. Specifically I am considering installing a TSDZ2 mid-drive motor. Typically this setup uses only one chainring, but I read an account of a person who opted for a double chainring setup. The intent was to have a granny gear that would not be used often but available just in case. The poster of this account removed the front derailleur and shifts by grabbing the chain tube and moving it laterally into the preferred ring. The shift cable routing does interfere with the motor mounting so abandoning the FD does make sense.
So has anyone done this? I tried moving the chaintube while riding my trike and I think it would work (I still have my FD installed which inhibits my experiment). The downside of this strategy is limit control. Unshipping a chain seems to be a real probability. OTOH if the granny ring is rarely used is chain drop a big deal. Also, is it possible to have reliable shifting success with 2 narrow-wide chainrings.
Interesting idea but I'm skeptical.