So I've got the rims lurking around my garage for a new wheelset. I'm not super happy with the Soma Weymouth 650b rims that are on my custom currently, so, eventually I'm going to get around to building a new set. One of the nice things about building a new wheelset is that you get to pick your hubs. I will re-use my SON Deluxe from the front, but probably not the Deore from the back. Being that I get to pick a new rear hub, well, I'm thinking I might like to go 11 speed. I mean 11 is down to the 105 level now and will probably be at the Tiagra level sometime this year or next year. So, it's getting down to the point that it's not really much more expensive than similar quality parts as in a 9 or 10 speed setup. Why 11 in particular? Well, read on.
I'm really liking running a wide-low double on my Custom but I'm thinking that I would like to jam a couple of more gears in to get more ratios in the 13-18 mph range that I ride most often in. I run 11-34 9 speed right now, with 44/28 in the front. Some of the gaps between gears are just wider than I would like. More gears in the cassette would seem to solve this. Of course, one might argue that, a better solution would be to just run a triple with a narrower cassette and you get all the benefits of more gears in the range that you ride in. However, for whatever reason, triples on my custom have never really shifted well. Either the granny, or the big ring, or both, overshift or undershift and it's just never quite right. It seems much happier with the wide-low double, never gives me any trouble at all. So I'd like to keep a wide low double, because this is the frame I want to keep riding most of the time. Although I would like to go a bit wider between the big ring and the little ring, I really use it like a 1x9 with a bailout gear anyway. So I was thinking maybe 46/26 up front and 12-32 in the back. And not just any 12-32. I'm looking for 12-13-14-15-16-18-20-22-25-28-32. This yields the following ratios in the big ring per Sheldon: 99.7 - 92.0 - 85.4 - 79.7 - 74.8 - 66.4 - 59.8 - 54.4 - 47.8 - 42.7 - 37.4. 13-32 or 13-34 might be even better, of course, nobody will ever make that. Another solution might just be to pedal harder and forget about any of this. Or, just switch my main bike to the Redwood, it seems to shift the triple just fine,and I currently have an 11-28 9 speed with a 46-36-24 Rivendell issue Sugino triple. But I don't have fenders on the Redwood and I kind of like it that way as a sunny day bike and with 700C Barlow Pass, it's a nice change of pace the way it is. I could go 650B and fenders as on the Custom but it feels so natural and nimble the way it is so I sort of want to keep it that way. So back to the 11 on the custom. Even Rivendell themselves built a 1x11 prototype recently, didn't they? well anyway just musing. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ signature goes here -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
