Not with my Quickbeam, and I never really loaded it up for touring, but I did a lot of riding on my Casseroll with a 17/19t dingle cog and a 22t freewheel with a single 42 ring up front, setup so the chainline was just between the two dingle cogs. It was a good setup with a lot of capability--I did tons of big climbs, including Diablo and Tam a few times each, and some trail riding.
One thing I will note is that while these setups do work well, shifting isn't trivial, so there is a certain amount of calculation of the length + steepness of the climb against the effort of stopping and shifting, then stopping and shifting again once the grade relents. I imagine that that calculation becomes more complicated with a touring load (which both makes climbing in a big gear harder, and handling the bike while performing the shift more difficult) and terrain like that found on the CA central coast, where there are no diablo-length climbs but there are a lot of shorter, steep ones. As Philip and others have noted, the best terrain for setups like this are mountains surrounded by flat ground--haul ass to the trailhead in your high gear, and then tackle the mountains with a nice low gear. Rolling terrain becomes a bit more complicated. How long or steep does a climb have to be for you to shift? I've never tried it, but I think a Quickbeam setup with a three-speed hub could do some awesome touring if you kept the load reasonable. Old english tourists used to go all over the place with their Sturmey Archer AW's. The updated SA hubs like the SRF-3 look pretty bomber and have wide ranges. My Quickbeam has mostly stayed a 1x1 since I built it up, but this thread has me wanting to put some more gears on it! On Monday, January 28, 2013 4:22:58 PM UTC-8, allenmichael wrote: > > Currently, I have a S1 set up "simply" with one in the front and one in > the back. I'm not sure how many gear inches I have but it handles moderate > hills in San Francisco comfortably and isn't too slow on the flats. I'm > wondering though about whether I could set up the bike with two-in-front > and two-in-back, put on a moderate load, and ride it as far as San Diego or > Los Angeles from here. > > Thanks in advance. > > Michael Allen > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
