robow

We say "Wash-i-taw" , just like it's spelled : )

djb

so yours is a 11-50, so less top end, but thats ok.
My question still is looking at chain life with all the crosschaining going on? I realize this is not easy to find this info, as 12 spd stuff is mostly used in mtb world, so dirty and cruddy.
but it does have real world implications, so even though the gear inch range of your 11-50 is pretty darn good (low on the high end though still a bit) and new tech is cool, how long will this stuff last vs 8,9,10 speed setups, and how much is the cost and availability of 11-50 cassettes and 12 spd chains?

Im all for new stuff, its just that in touring, there is a real world advantage of having commonly found and a reasonable price/performance balance.

it seems the whole 1x thing just doesnt want to address these questions/aspects.

djb

very cool about the "funneling" rock structures.

on a side note, in very very hilly and very very steep latin america, you see zig zag cow paths all the time---them bovines figured out on their own how to do the switchback thing. I have lots of photos of this but cant get at them right now. You see cowpaths on the most ridiculously steep hills, and wonder how they are falling down the hill all the time.

djb

and I would amend the whole V8 vs tiny European engine thing---its more modern I'd say, when highways were being put in during the 50s and 60s, the V8 was common, while in Europe, cars and trucks traditionally were smaller with smaller engines, so the switchback thing just made sense for the vehicles. Whereas mom and pop in their Chevy could just V8 themselves easily up long steeper hills.
my theory anyway

elcruxio

I had to go and try this on my wife's mountain bike which still has a triple and a normal rear mech. Having the chain on a large or small ring does absolutely nothing to retain the chain or prevent chain slap. Having the chain on a larger chainring changes the geometry a bit but if you ride over even moderately sized roots at speed it's ring ding a ding and goodbye paintwork.

I had my fatbike with 1x and Sram clutch rear mech next to it and it does in fact eliminate even the remote chance of chain slap. This is because clutch mechs have a friction element at the first pivot point which holds the mech arm static when riding. When testing a non clutch and clutch rear mech side by side it's night and day difference. The clutch mech does have stiffer springs as well but it's mainly the friction element, ie. the clutch which is doing the work.

Now that I think about it I did try 1x with my previous mountain bike and didn't use a clutch mech then. It didn't work, because the chain kept falling off. Not sure if I used a narrow wide chainring. But when I used a double before that I would have dropped chains during downhill runs. Also had the chain wedge itself between chainrings once or twice again on downhill runs. And a broken chains as well. Note that I would not pedal on downhills because it would not be possible. The reason for that is below.

Downhillers used chainstay protectors to protect their frames against chain slap. But it doesn't change the point that you can easily get the same kind of shocks and vibrations on a hardtail as you get on a downhill bike while riding significantly slower. Downhillers have 200mm of suspension travel while your typical hardtail usually at most has 120mm at the front and the rear is going to be bouncing quite a lot.

Actually I think one thing needs to be made clear here. Mountain biking and cycling is confusing with all the terminology and terms that are specific to a discipline of cycling but also have common language equivalents. So to define trail I mean the mountain biking definition of trail, ie. rougher than XC single track but not quite as bad as technical downhill runs. Trail bikes typically have 120-160mm of travel and tend to be full suspension. Actually trail bikes are pretty much the same as enduro bikes but not competetive. It's really silly.
Anyways I've been riding these kinds of trails starting with a 100mm hardtail, then a 120mm hardtail and now with a 120mm front suspended fatbike. I'm a little undergunned to be honest but 140mm at the front was too much for climbing on the fatbike.
Why I haven't been riding something faster and more fun you may ask? Well, Finland's terrain is kinda unique since it was under the glacier during the last ice age. This means that the natural granite was ground to stones in varying sizes and those stones are literally everywhere. Every single trail is littered with these head sized boulders. Secondly our forests are heavily pine and fir based, both of which are surface root trees. This in turn creates trails which are nothing but technical. There's no speed here. Just rock and root gardens.
The environment really is unique because go only a hundred miles south to estonia and they don't have these boulders littered everywhere. Their forests are sand based and a travelling boulder the size of a small car was an actual tourist attraction.

Having that context thing out of the way when I look at trail pictures of Colorado or anywhere in the US rockies all I seem to find are these glass smooth flowy single tracks you could ride a cyclocross bike down. If your experience is with relatively smooth singletracks especially if you don't do jumps then I can understand why you might not see the need for better chain retention current 1x systems provide. I've seen only a limited amount of single tracks in the european alps but the ones I have seen have all been pretty darn smooth and nicely built.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with that. I'd love to be able to ride hours and hours of fast downhill singletrack. In fact that's probably the most fun a person can have. But that's not what we have here.

It would seem that at least some shimano clutch mechs are compatible with multiple chainrings. Maybe it's a sram thing that you can only use 1x with them. At least sram road clutch rear mechs are completely incompatible with multiple chainrings

Correction. The front mech keeps the chain relatively secure if it does fly off a chainring, but the chain can fly off if the going gets rough. The narrow wide keeps the chain in place even if you shift during rough stuff. But the narrow wide doesn't have any detrimental effects so it's really a non issue. Other way to achieve the same thing would be to use a chain guide and front pulleys to retain the chain but those add friction and do no favors to shifting performance.

I have. Multiple times. Also multiple times during shifts if I've miscalculated a sudden uphill approach but also during rough downhill runs.

Refer to my earlier points above.

Not doing wrong per se but riding trails that would in other places be considered technical downhill sections (mtb discipline downhill) with a hardtail can and will wreak all kinds of havoc in the drive line.
Then again haven't had a single issue after I went with a proper 1x system so there's that. Then again the fatbike does have a bit more rear suspension than your typical hardtail but it still gets bounced around quite a bit.

Weird that. I was dismayed by the first Sram chain that lasted so little so I tracked the second one and it was around 2000km's on the road and the chain was overstretched. Maybe they nowdays make better chains but I use other brands nowdays. I get better life with less money.

elcruxio

I was curious about this and the tradition to build switchbacks in Europe seems to predate automobiles. Some of the mountain roads may be as old as the roman empire but some of the still in use roads were built in the early 1800's when cars weren't really a thing.
One reason for the switchbacks especially in the alps may be due to gradients which would be quite impossible to manage with any vehicle if the roads were built just straight on. You do see the straight over the mountain roads in other places though. The ardennes have pretty brutal gradients (not nearly as bad as the alps though) and no switchbacks. Not fun with a bicycle.

Personally I feel the switchbacks may be safer overall as they limit speeds and allow for constant engine braking. They can be difficult with heavy traffic though.

Tourist in MSN

When the sign says 13 percent grade for several kilometers, I do not use any gearing at all, instead I walk.

Tourist in MSN

As Cyccommute noted, an 11 to 50 range cassette is smaller range of 455 percent.

A lot of people tour on Rohloff bikes, not so many in USA, but elsewhere they do. And as I previously noted, I felt that my 526 percent range on my Rohloff was slightly less than desirable. Yours is well below that.

I do not know what tire size you use, but you said you use a 40T chainring. If you used the same 37mm wide tire I have on my 700c derailleur touring bike, your gearing would look like this plot.



My Rohloff bike, I tour with a 36T chainring, but for around home riding where I never carry more than a bag of groceries on it and the hills are reasonable, I use a 44T chainring to gear it up. The plot below is with my 44T chainring that I use for riding around home.



Thus, my second gear is comparable to your first gear giving me one lower. And your highest gear is between my next to highest and highest.

If you want to tour on that, it would not be my choice, but people have toured on much worse. So, go ahead.

When I toured Southern Florida, the only hills were approaches to bridges. Everything else was flatter than a pancake. Depending on wind and pavement roughness, I mostly used three or four gears that are between about 60 to 75 gear inches. Some people are spinners, high cadence and low torque, some are more like a diesel, low cadence and high torque. Not sure where you fall in that range, but you might prefer a different gear inch range than I do when riding on the flats.

Below is the plot for my 700c derailleur touring bike. Triple, half step plus granny, 46/42/24. Eight speed Sram cassette, 11/12/14/16/18/21/26/32. I avoid the two most cross chained gears for each chainring, thus I only use 18 of the possible 24 gears, that is why the plot only shows 18 gears.

The thing I like about this gearing is that I spend most of my time above 50 gear inches, and this gives me much closer gearing where I spend most of my time. Below 50 gear inches, the gears are spaced out more, but I am not down there very much.



Thus, on my Florida tour, in that 60 to 75 gear inch range, I had four gears within my desired gear inch range to choose from, thus for just a slight change in windage I could easily adjust my gear choice to give me the cadence that I wanted.

That in part is why I chose a derailleur bike for that trip, my Rohloff bike would only have given me two gears instead of four that I used for 99 percent of the riding.

My point here is that your gearing would also have given you two gears to choose from in the cadence range that I prefer when touring. Thus, with a 1X system you suffer the same disadvantage of an IGH that has wider gear spacing, you are passing up one of the advantages of derailleur bikes where you can get closer spacing between gears.

But, if that works for you, go for it.

BobG

I'm guessing that's a 26" wheel in TCS' photo as he figures a 104" high ...

26x40/10 = 104"

An 11 tooth small cog would produce a 94.5" high ...

26x40/11 = 94.5"

pdlamb

Well...

I never felt particularly safe in Appalachian coal country on roads with lots of switchbacks. Too many people (not just coal truckers) would cut the switchbacks wide, always a nasty surprise when you were coming into the switchback from the other direction. Or, because the road was winding even between the switchbacks, imagine coming around a curve with a bit of speed (maybe 30-40 mph) and finding a slow coal truck had just pulled out of a mine entrance

And yet, we never blamed the truckers. Their loads were what housed and fed the local population, we all knew that. And which is worse, a loaded coal truck maintaining 15 mph around a switchback, or being behind that same truck trying to accelerate uphill (hah!) from a 5 mph corner?

djb

good points. Being in truck country is always tricky, and like you, I realize the drivers are dealing with a large vehicle and usually are doing their best.

re downhills with switchbacks. My memories of this in the Pyrenees are that we generally had a good line of sight on the upcoming traffic, and I often would purposely get out in front of fellow downhill car traffic as I often was faster than them, so getting out in front meant less baulking happening. Often with groups of cars, you'd have a mom or pop who was very unsure of things, so passing them was both safer, as other cars would be bottlenecked behind grandma or grandpa, and this would allow me to do my "have fun" time with successive hairpins.
Again, good line of sight looking over my shoulder coming to a hairpin would allow me to use more of the road and carry more speed out of the hairpin, and therefore keep ahead of the train of cars as much as I could.
fun fun fun til your daddy takes the t bird away. I get my jollies when I can, as safely as I can, but dammit, after working my arse off going up a pass, I;m sure as heck going to have fun going down.

Tourist in MSN

The worst trucks I have ever delt with were logging trucks on PEI on roads near the ferry to NS. Some of them gave me a lot of room, but some of them passed me as if I was not even there.

And I do not know what it was about their trucks, but they had a much bigger wind blast than other large highway trucks. As they pass you, the air blast almost blows you off the road, but the worst part was that as the end of the trailer passed you, you were then sucked deeper into the traffic lane which often had other vehicles closely following.

Several times when I looked in my mirror and saw a loaded logging truck coming behind me, I pulled over to the side as much as I could and waited for them to pass. The only times that I have done that before were on the Pacific Coast before crossing a bridge, often the road shoulder ended at the bridge and when you were on the bridge you were in the lane of traffic which cars and trucks behind might not expect.

cyccommute 

Been doing it for almost 40 years. I will point out that nearly every mountain bike made in the last 20 years has a chain protector on the driveside chain stay. Even 1x sold today have them. Chain slap probably can’t be completely eliminated due to physics and the freewheel mechanism. Changing into a larger rig tightens up the system and reduces chain slap just like the clutch does.

If the clutch eliminates chain slap, why do mountain bikes still come with chain guards?

You’ve just admitted that the narrow wide is necessary to keep the chain from falling off of single speeds.The clutch mechanism is less important than the stronger springs now being used. Very early rear derailers had very weak springs which is why many of us used the upshift to higher gears. Derailer springs have gotten stiffer and the latest iteration is very strong, indeed. But that is all because of the need to keep the whole system much tighter on 1x so that they don’t throw the chain all the time. It’s also more important on dual suspension bikes because the chain is constantly loosening and tightening as the suspension extends and contracts.

If you have had a chain drop without shifting, your bike is adjusted wrong. I’ve done 30 mph on washboarded roads as well as rough downhills and have never dropped a chain off of the crank. It would be almost impossible given that the front derailer is acting as a chain keeper in addition to it’s other purposes.

I don’t need a definition of a “trail”, thank you very much. I don’t break down trails into cross country and real trails. Trails I’ve ridden all my life have smooth bits and rough bits. I started riding the trails around Colorado and the western US on trails that were designed for hikers and carved by motorcycles and 4 wheel drives. Most everything that people ride now on bikes with 140mm of front and rear travel, I was riding 40 years ago on bike that was one generation away from a modified cruiser. Rocks and drops are just a way of life here.

Not unlike mountains that are only 55 million years old and actively growing. Our forests may be a bit drier but we still have plenty of roots. And our mountains haven’t been flattened by sheets of ice.

Oh please!. Our trails aren’t “glass smooth”. Please quit being insulting. I’ve already said that when I do 30 mph, it is usually on a connector road. Yes, we have some flowing trails. I suspect that you have some to. I’ve been on enough mountain bike trails (probably close to 30,000 miles of them) to know that trails have a mix of baby heads and smooth bits. For every mile of smooth dirt, there’s a mile of boulders. I wasn’t born at night and I certainly wasn’t born last night.


Sorry but you have no idea what you are talking about. The only bikes I have have triples and I have more than one with a clutch rear derailer and they all work perfectly fine. There is nothing about the clutch that makes them unusable on multigeared cranksets. The clutch isn’t some kind of magic mechanism that explodes when it gets close to a crank with 2 or 3 rings.


No, not a “correction”. In nearly 40 years of mountain biking, I have never thrown a chain off a chainwheel unless I was shifting. Even then it was only on the inner ring and was due to a misadjustment.

Yes, the narrow-wide chain ring keeps the chain on a 1x without a chain keeper but you have to have the narrow-wide to do so...by your own admission. The continued use of chainstay protectors on 1x bikes says to me that chain slap hasn’t been eliminated either.

Quit considering your local or your riding experience “unique”. I ride in mountains which has uphill and downhill sections. I’ve got nearly 40 years of experience with mountain biking. And, I assure you, that Colorado’s mountain bike trails aren’t the equivalent of a ride on a bike path. Technical downhill sections are mostly innocuous when it comes to damage to the drivetrain unless you dump the bike on those rocks. Even then, the damage to a chain would be minimal in almost all cases. Chains break under tension and, most of the time, you are coasting on a downhill which puts zero tension on the chain.

Chain stress come from using it under power either on the flats, which causes minimal damage, or while climbing which puts much more stress on the chain. Even then, breaking a chain is more user error than it is something the chain does. In all honesty, I’ve carried a chain tool on every ride I’ve done over the last 35 years or so in anticipation of a chain break. I’ve used it once on someone else’s chain.

mstateglfr 

This thead is officially cycco'd!

Tourist in MSN

Yup. Happens occasionally.

robow

Yea, why is that? Is that part of their training..........
today on our road course we're going to work on seeing just how close you can drive to the mannequin on the bicycle without making contact, OK OK, a little contact is fine but just make sure you hit your horn when you're just behind the cyclist. And if any of you try to move over a few feet for safety, realize you're buying the beer after class today.

djb

you know, I kinda figure that truck drivers are just like any other part of the population, there are the usual jerks, and then the odd psychopath unhappy with life and others, but all in all its probably no different than what we, as car drivers, see other car drivers doing on our regular drives.

we've all had hair raising few times with psychotic asshat truck drivers, but certainly having a mirror is a big help in spotting either an inattentive driver coming up behind, or a sketchy narrow situation with another large vehicle coming from front also.

re your comment on training--I wish I could find it, but I once saw a great bus driver training video from Peru or somewhere, where they had bus drivers sit on a line of exercise bicycles, and one of their fellow drivers came wooshing by in a bus, blaring the fog horn for good measure. One of the poor suckers jumped off the bike before the bus got to him, and it was clearly a setup "feel good" video to show how bus drivers were being taught what its like to pass close to someone. In my experience in the parts of latin america, its usually the bus drivers who would pass too close, the truck drivers were for the most part, like 98% , very respectful and careful.

Tourist in MSN

My comment really was on the trucks, not so much the drivers. I felt that the logging truck drivers were like the rest of large truck drivers, which is just like car drivers, some are very respectful and give you lots of room, some not so much. And some see you as an opportunity for their own sociopathic enjoyment.

But the air blast from the logging trucks as they drove by was much worse than typical semi-trucks. Bad enough that I did not want to be moving on the road next to them, even if it was a respectful driver.

balto charlie

This looks pretty serious to me. To do it in 4 days you're talking 75miles/7500ft(2500M) per day with gear. I'm not saying you can't do it, but I couldn't. I would be happy to do it in 6 days but would still be gassed. Please do a trip report, it does look beautiful and you have peaked my interest. I've been loving the gravel lately....
Sorry OP. Back to gearing: I'd be screaming for my granny on this mother.

danders

Looking at my options to lower gearing, new used bike currently 34/48 and 11-32 2x10 sram.

1. 3x10 X5 22/33/44+ bar ends microshift and FD using current 11-32 18.7-108 gear inches
Leaves option for even lower gearing 11-36 in future for those >10% climbs I avoid now.

2. 2x10 GX 24/38+11-36 cassette and FD 18.1-94 gear inches.

Opinions, concerns better options? thanks

djb

I'd say the most important thing in preparation for a trip like this is to have some sort of device that can give you even a reasonably good account of how much climbing you do in a day, and then train gradually increasing the climbing you do.
Really the only way to be prepared, and to get a feel of how much your arse is going to be kicked day after day, and then you can more realistically plan out daily mileage, and try to figure out sleeping options where, and food availability etc.
I would warn that doing this stuff on gravel and tracks and all that will be harder on your body overall, your average speed will be a lot less than a lot of riding you're used to, and you will really have to take into account food access, even water, and balance all this out with being realistic about your abilities, and what load you'll be carrying, which makes a big big difference in big climbing days on average speed.
I've had averages on bigass climbing days of 2000 m in the very low teens of kph, but if you can train and ride a lot in sort of similar conditions, its not that hard to get a feel for what is realistic.

take into account also that if you're out in the boonies on your own, you don't want to be totally gassed and pooped and this can increase user error on a downhill or whatever, and scrapes and whatnot is one thing, but you don't want to deal with any injuries when not in an accessible area and having to deal with it on your own.
Kinda same stuff with knowing how to deal with mechanicals, making sure your bikes are in great shape, and at least being able to deal with common stuff that could happen.

robow

The low I could easily live with but the high, a little too low for me but it might work just fine for you.

Charlie B

Shimano Ultegra

elcruxio

Seems to be a manufacturer choice type of thing. Canyons don't have them. Treks do. Couldn't check specialized because their site doesn't work. But all in all, the clutch does pretty much eliminate chain slap.


Yes? What's your point? The chainring designed for 1X systems works great for 1X systems with no detriment whatsoever. Doesn't even add friction.
The 1X is what I like to call a system where it combines different technologies which result in something that's more than the sum of its parts.

If you've ever worked with a clutch rear derailer or taken one apart you'd know that the clutch is the defining factor which makes all the difference. The springs could be looser if the mechs were solely for hardtails but as you wrote, full squish bikes require a bit more tension to keep everything in place.

Ah. Ye olde "you must be mechanically incompetent" -argument. Yet you bring up washboards... I feel it might be pointless to continue the discussion about rough trails and their effect on chain retention if the example you choose to use of rough terrain is something that can be tackled with a cyclocross bike and wide tires.


Ie. we're not discussing the same thing. What I'm reading is you're used to smooth trails which have been carved out by motor vehicles (motorcycles and 4x4's really smooth the trails quite nicely). Also the fact that people ride those trails now with 140mm bikes does not mean that is what those 140mm bikes were designed for. Trail in MTB lingo does have a definition but you've for some reason decided to use your own definition.
As far as I'm concerned Trail as in Trail bike trail is something that's not really at all rideable with a fully rigid unless you're some kind of prodigy. Suspension is required and any sort of speed requires at least 120mm of suspension front and back. Preferably 140mm.

Mountains which are still intact. I've seen mountains. I've spent some considerable time in the European alps. The riding terrain there is largely fast and smooth and lacking in significant boulders. It's also not all that rooty.
When sheets of ice flatten a mountain range, the mountains don't actually disappear. They get ground down to smaller bits which are then littered around the countryside. That's a lot of boulders. You don't really understand it until you see it in person. The opposite is also true. I can never believe how smooth and soft Middle European forests were when I've been there. They're almost like maintained parks. It's ridiculous.

I suspect that somewhere we have flowing trails. Maybe up north. I haven't seen any but I've only lived in five cities all across Finland in the last ten years.


I need to email SRAM that they're wrong about their clutch derailers.

No point in going over this again but you hit a jump or a rock hard enough and your chain will fly.

But again. There is no detriment in using a narrow wide or the hatchet chainring Shimano uses. It doesn't add friction and it keeps the chain on better. What's your point?
Also plenty of mountain bikes today are sold without chainstay protectors.


I really should have taken a picture when the snows came. But let me put it this way. A hiking trail will need to be qualified as beginner or easy for it to be rideable with a mountain bike. Medium or hard and typically it's a total no go with a bike. And there are a lot more medium and hard hiking trails than there are easy ones.
We don't actually have specific mountain bike trails so every trail is a hiking trail which mountain bikers just use.

I don't know how much stress it causes a chain when it drops between chainrings on a downhill and it makes this grindy noise when you try to pedal as you reach the uphill section and the chain is wrapped around the chainrings in a very ornate and origamiesque manner. That has to cause some issues right? Anyway it's really annoying when that happens. Luckily with the narrow wide chainring and clutch rear mech which I'm somehow forced to use (and haven't chose to use?) I no longer drop chains. I don't think about the power train when riding anymore. My multitool has a chaintool but I've forgotten to carry quick links for a long time now.

cyccommute 

That has always been the case. Some companies install them and some don’t. Chainslap is still a thing even with clutches and 1x. You’d have to go single speed or go fixed to completely avoid it. Even with a clutch, a derailer on a dual suspension bike can’t compensate for the action of the suspension.

What’s your point about dropped chains with multiple chainwheels? As part of this discussion, I watched my front derailer recently. To drop a chain and get it jammed in between chainwheels would be next to impossible on a properly adjusted front derailer and it would be very difficult with an improperly adjusted derailer. There is not enough space between the derailer plates for the chain to slip down and jam between the chainrings. Basically, as there might be no detriment to the narrow-wide system, there is no detriment to using a front derailer.

I have worked on them. I’ve even taken one apart...or, rather, I had to put one back together that someone else took apart. The “clutch” in the X9 that I worked on is a simple piece of rubber in the A knuckle that slows forward bounce. It doesn’t eliminate it. This video


shows that Shimano’s clutch is more elaborate...but the fact that it can break seems to be a problem. If you look at the first part of the video, you can see the chain tension slacken as the derailer is bounced. However, at the end of the video (about 4:50), the mechanic is bouncing the derailer and the chain is still slackening. That reduction of tension is what causes chainslap. With really large gears on the back, the chain is further away from the frame so chainslap is reduced but the same occurs with a triple. Upshift on the front and use one of the larger gears in back and the chain bounce is further away from the frame. Like I said, this is something that’s been known and used for eons by mountain bikers.


So is the ye olde “you must be a bicycle weakling” argument any better? Washboards are just an example of a regular...and sustained...road surface that can cause the drivetrain to bounce with very high frequency. If a chain is going to fall off, it would do it in that kind of situation.


And here’s the ye olde “my riding is so much harder than what you ride, you weakling” argument. You are making an argument from ignorance. Perhaps motorcycles and 4x4s smooth out the trails in your area but they don’t here. If anything, they make trails worse. I know what a “trail” is in mountain bike lingo. I don’t need you to define it for me.

There really haven’t been that many more trails developed around me that weren’t here 40 years ago and most of those trails were established 150 years ago by miners following paths established by Native Americans thousands of years before. There are only so many ways of getting up a mountain and most of those are already taken. Going off those trails is littered with cliffs, rocks, dead trees, etc.

Oh, please! Read a geology book, why don’t you? The US Rockies and the Alps have been glaciated. But more importantly, they aren’t “smooth and lacking in significant boulders”. They are mountains. They are the source of boulders. Bits of mountains are constantly falling off to make more boulders.

I have, by the way, seen the effects of glaciation. There were glaciers in most of the northern part of the US (and Canada) as well as many, many valley glaciers here in Colorado and in the Alps. We even have a few still, although they are now only isolated ice fields. Yes, there are rocks. But there are no more nor fewer rocks in the glacial valleys then there are in the unglaciated areas of the mountains.

So you are really trying to convince me that your trails are nothing but baby heads as far as the eye can see? Uh huh. And how do you get any momentum on top of all those boulders.

Perhaps you should. You might even want to tell them that they have a clutch derailer for their 2x system since they can’t be used with their 2x system.

Just to be clear, if you can use a clutch rear derailer on a 2x system, you can use it on a 3x.


If it will fly off on a 2x or 3x system, it will fly off a 1x more easily. Of course if you adjust the front derailer properly, the chain can’t come off because it has no where to go.


My point is that you have to have narrow-wide type chainrings for 1x or the chain will come off much more easily than with any multi-geared front system. There may be no detriment to using them but you have to use them. Additionally, there is no reason why a chain should be more prone to falling off with multiple front chainrings.

Again, quit considering your area to be “unique”. However, I’m a bit confused. You keep telling me that my mountain bike trails are just glorified bike paths and then say that a mountain bike can’t be used on any trail that is harder than an easy walk. I though you said that your trails are these nightmares of nothing but baby heads. I would consider a “beginner or easy” hiking trail to be relatively flat, smooth, and clear of rocks and roots. Something seems off here.

Yep. That would cause problems. Of course, if the chain is “wrapped around the chainrings in a very ornate...manner”, the bike isn’t like to be able to be pedaled in the first place.

But if you adjusted your bike properly you wouldn’t have that problem. I’ve never jammed a chain into chainrings because the chain fell into the gap between the outer or middle ring. As I said before, I’ve never broken a chain while riding. I too have a chain tool that I carried for nearly 40 years but I’ve only ever used it once, on someone else’s bike.