reducing gears

snig

been upgrading my bike slowly,time for the drivetrain,used for around town,stay in the same gear most of the time so seems pointless having 20 odd gear, looking for some suggestions on my options,light weight,handfull of gears,smooth fast positive gear changes,budget around £300-400

link to spec of bike here
I have upgrade wheels,seat+post,carbon rigid fork
http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/category/ ... he-10-9265

supersonic

I would simply remove the two chain rings you do not use, and the shifter and front mech.

Consider fitting a closer ratio cassette too.

snig

sounds a good option,would a road cassette make more sense as I dont go off road or stick to MTB?

any suggestions what which to go for? so much out there to choose from,is there a go-to cassette

looking at this?
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/shimano-dura-ac ... -12t/#more

shouldbeinbed

You could build an alfine/nexus 8 hubbed wheel for that, more gears than you'll need TBH, ticks all your boxes apart form weight but you'll never notice that when you're rolling along even if you do take it somewhere a bit lumpier.

It has the added bonus of a smooth chain line, bombproof reliability, less maintenence and you can change gear when stopped so you're always in the right gear even if you get caught out by a plonker forcing you to emergency brake round town.

MichaelW

If you want fewer gears, then a single chainring setup in 1x9/10 is good BUT the chain can bounce off so use your front mech as a chainkeeper. You can use any cassette you want. Use gear inches to estimate your required range and see what cassettes match that.
Alfine hub can be fitted but you need chain tensioner whcih negates some of the clean-running capabilities. I love my Alfine, it is clean, easy, efficient enough and convenient. I use an oil dip about once/year but the first 3 years were maintenance-free.

snig

the Alfine hubs sound just the thing,I made the mistake of reading the wiggle review on the Alfine 11 hub so want one of those 8)


edit- but thinking about it getting on for £500 for the Alfine 11(as will be using LBS for fitting) to reduce gears made me think do I really need gears! single speed makes more sense and saves me loads too,so booked in to LBS for Monday!
any advice would be good,makes to go for etc as when I spoke to me LBS today about reducing my gears he said !if the gears are working fine no point in removing them just don't use them!! which is all well and good but no point carrying around weight if it's not needed when it can be removed,so maybe he will tell me I already have a single speed by just not selecting another gear! so any pointers to help with the "chat" on monday would be good,tried a single speed once but didn't like the play in the chain so any good chain tensioners to use and chains as if I leave it to the shop I will be getting goodness knows what make,also is reusing one of the front chain rings a bad idea or should I get a single speed one?

flimflam_machine

My advice would be not to go singlespeed if you need to use a chain tensioner (you probably will since you have vertical rear dropouts rather than track-ends). It won't give you the smoothness and directness of a bike that's actually designed to be a SS.

I'm basing this on my recent experience of building up a commuter out of an MTB frame. Initially I built this as a SS with a tensioner. It was just noisy and inefficient compared to a purpose-built SS. In the end I thought that if I was going to have an extra set of jockey wheels in the drivetrain it may as well be a derailleur that I could use to change gear. It's now a 1 x 9 (42 x 11-32), which is great. It's pretty light and has all the gear range I need. The chainline isn't optimal at the extremes, but it's set up to be dead straight in the cruising gears that I spend the most time in (around 70 gear inches). The chain's skipped off the front chainring once, which I think is due to the chain being too long (soon to be remedied), and the fact that it's a ramped (rather than SS specific chainring).

So, as an initial minimal-cost step, I'd try taking off the middle and small chainrings and moving the big chainring to the middle postion to run it as a 1 x 10. You'll either need some short chainring bolts or you could add a bashguard or two as chain guides to prevent it skipping off. Remove the front mech and shifter and give it a try. Unless you're really fussy about cadence I think this would work well since you'll still have 10 unique gear ratios (most of the ones you currently have are replications anyway). Should cost you about £20.

snig

cheers Flimflam,think your right,read a lot today and buying a SS buy would be the better option,going to get my LBS to do the work so would these be suited to my bike for around town

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... delID=1094

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... delID=1018

don't mind spending a bit more if needed

flimflam_machine

For the moment I'd leave your wide-range cassette on (I'm assuming that it's the 11-36 as specced). See what range of gears you use and whether you're bothered by the size of the interval between them. This is a very useful tool to use:

http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/

At the moment, if you were to go with your existing 42-tooth chainring and your 11-36 cassette you'd have a range of roughly 30-100 gear inches. FWIW, I'm not embarrassingly slow on my commute (basically flat, 6-mile) and I rarely use anything below 40 or above 90, so I essentially use the middle 7 of my 9 gears. This has the advantage of not using the most bent (i.e., worst, least efficient) chainlines and reduces the likelihood of a skipping chain.

If you find that you're doing the same then you have the option of spending money to get a closer ratio cassette, based on the range of gears that you find yourself using (advantages = smaller increments between gears = smaller cadence changes, and slower sprocket wear; disadvantages = smaller range of ratios, more extreme chainlines). If you're not bothered with bigger steps between gears then stick with your existing cassette (advantages = no cash spent, better chainlines; disadvantages = bigger increments between gears, you're really riding around on about 7 gears so you'll wear them faster).

snig

cheers FlimFlam that really helps,helps towards the SS