Originally Posted by
BCRider
That's fine if you don't mind the extra effort of moving the BB over. But before you do check to be sure the BB shell on both bikes is the same width. Fairly often MTB's are 72mm while most road bikes are 68mm. There is a lot of 68mm MTB's though so you make get lucky.
Yes, they are both 68mm so I got lucky.
So let's say that I change the crank. I use the 68-110mm UN26 bottom bracket and Shimano FCM-442 crank from my mountain bike. I replace the smallest chainring to 26T and the middle chainring to 42T as joejack951 suggested and then adjust the Sram Rival front derailleur to switch between those two. If this works, I think it would make a great combination! Especially since those two chainrings would cost about 40$. Of course there are still those possible issues with bad chainline or I can't get the front derailleur to change correctly but this just might be worth risk.
I haven't changed chainrings before so I have one question about it. If I change the two inner rings for this tour and I only use those two, is it possible to remove the outer ring (44T) completely? There's no use for it I guess since I can't change to it.