front chain ring suggestions for a 9 speed 29 er

hocombewood · February 2012

hi, having sold my Genesis IOID to fund building a 29er with rigid forks. I am mainly doing gravel tracks and not much downhill. I want to convert the bike from 27 speed to 9 speed. I've got a 11-34 rear cassette and XTR long mech. Is there a typical front chain ring to use with this sort of set up ? I am a bit of a fat b4rstard so 53 front might be pushing it a bit on the climbs

Just interested in if there is a program that works out what ratios work well ? I was thinking 36 or 38 front or maybe a 44 ?

I apologise if this seems a stupid question, but just trying to avoid expense of getting it wrong.

thanks Jules

supersonic · February 2012

There are programs such as this:

http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/

Your larger wheels will make the gearing harder compared to a 26. WHat did you have before, 42/32/22? Did you stay in the middle most of the time? How much did you use the other rings, and did you run out of gears?

hocombewood · March 2012

thanks for the link. For the last year I've been on a single speed 34/16. when I had a 3x9 before I rarely used the granny ring. I'll check out the sheldon page.

rgds

mrmonkfinger · March 2012

hocombewood wrote:

thanks for the link. For the last year I've been on a single speed 34/16. when I had a 3x9 before I rarely used the granny ring. I'll check out the sheldon page.

personally, I can't see any problem with a single 32 - 36 ring at the front then.

but check out the gear calc page - work out some numbers for the gears you know you've used before to get a feel for what the numbers mean.

The Rookie · March 2012

If going from a 26 to a 29, you need to drop roughly 2T at the front for equivalence, so 34 to 32 or 36 to 34.

Simon

front chain ring suggestions for a 9 speed 29 er

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