Which 1x setup to go for

Jimny14

I'm looking at putting a one front chainring setup on my commuter as it's currently an mtb focused bike it has 42 (and two others I never use) front and 14-28 on the back. This setup I spend most my time in top and occasionally change to 2 cogs down the gearing but that's it. I'm thinking about single chainring but all the front narrow wide chainrings I have seen so far only go as far as 44. Would this be big enough for me with feasibly an 11 speed starting at 11? As you may notice my riding is rather flat.

bendertherobot

42 front is fine. Even 40. I had a 44 front once and it wasn't really needed.

You have quite a small cassette for an MTB mind, what bike is it? How many speed?

There are lots of variations but, broadly, 40t with 11-36 will do most things.

roger_merriman

Jimny14 wrote:

I'm looking at putting a one front chainring setup on my commuter as it's currently an mtb focused bike it has 42 (and two others I never use) front and 14-28 on the back. This setup I spend most my time in top and occasionally change to 2 cogs down the gearing but that's it. I'm thinking about single chainring but all the front narrow wide chainrings I have seen so far only go as far as 44. Would this be big enough for me with feasibly an 11 speed starting at 11? As you may notice my riding is rather flat.

if your using a 14-28 cassette the jump to a 11-34 would give two gear each side of your present cassette 42 to 44 chainring doesn't do much in terms of gearing.

rhodrich

Your riding is rather flat, and you can't be bothered with too many gears? Why not go the whole hog, and go single speed or fixed gear? Gearing all depends on what wheel/tyre size you're running, but 42x15 or 42x16 should do you fine.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Gearing is very personal, depending upon many factors such as power; terrain; aero CdA etc.

I'm far from a Chris Hoy powerhouse, middle aged and have gone from a "couch potato" to cycling for improved fitness in the last ~14 months. Currently ~77Kg, having not been able to train hard since early Feb until this last week, estimated FTP of ~265W according to Direto power meter in Zwift. I like climbing hills, for me nothing currently beats heading to the South Downs and torturing my legs up a chain of the relatively big cat4s, like yesterday's first visit of the year on my Cube.

For a year, I went 1x8 on the Voodoo, often using the alternative 29er wheelset. 34T On One Ringmaster up front, with 11-30T cassette. The gear range worked for me, the hardest gear barely got any use, while the easiest gear would get me up local small inclines up to ~10% gradient.

But then I discovered Copsewood and Dell Roads, that hit ~15% and ~20% respectively, which would give me sore knees after doing a few reps, so I went back to 2x8 last September so I could use the 24T granny ring again. When I need to swap out the cassette, I'm now thinking of going for 13-26, to reduce tooth increase per gear change.

Throw some figures into http://sheldonbrown.com/gear-calc.html , simply swapping out that 14-28 cassette for something like 11-28 would give you a significantly harder gear.

Jimny14

I have toyed with the idea of a fixed gear and it may well be the way I go especially for a summer bike as may convert an old roadie to use as a low maintenance option and keep my other with disc brakes etc for poorer weather. Might look at a 42 16 (or a bit easier) as a single speed (probably won't go full fixed)

richk

Gearing for a commute is personal. For mine I have 42 x 11-30 (8 sp). My ideal would be 42 x 12 - 30 but I've not seen that cassette. But that's just what works for me & my routes. I'd like to go single speed (for simplicity / maintenance) but it's not a realistic proposition.