Touring - Anyone have experience with 48/44/24 crankset?

Which front dr will work with a 48/44/24 crankset?

That's a MTB triple--e.g., XT/XTR--for a road bike? If so, the same road triple front dr as for 105, Ultegra, Dura Ace cranks.

If you go to this faq page by Chris Juden http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3808 down near the bottom is a question about half-stepping. Mr. Juden does not believe current derailleurs will work well with less than a 10 tooth difference in the outer chainrings. I was wondering if this was other tourers experience.

I experimented with half stepping two years ago. The ramped and pinned chainrings like Shimano would not upshift well at all for me, Then someone suggested I try plain Sugino rings and those worked much better but still required some finese when shifting under load. I think because the chainrings are so close in diameter the chain is more difficult to deflect to the next chainring.
The half stepping didn't do anything for me,I went to 9 speed last year and that brought the higher gear ratios close enough together that I seldom need to double shift to find a comfortable gear.

According to Robert Beckman (http://www.coinet.com/~beckman/oddsends.html) and Rivendell (http://rivendellbicycles.com/html/101_frontder.html), if you want half-step, a road double derailleur works best.

I had hafl-step back with my 21-speed bike, however, now that I have 27 speeds, I prefer to use a custom cassette which gives me results fairly similar to what I had with half-step plus granny, but with less double shifts. For instance, at some point, my tandem had:
48-38-24 and 13-15-16-17-18-20-23-26-34

Which front dr will work with a 48/44/24 crankset?
I use a 105 with mine. It works just fine.

Michel and Ziemas, thank you. Nothing beats experience.

I use a 105 with mine. It works just fine.
I'm an old fan of 'half-step with granny', just curious, do you run the FD indexed, or friction? How picky was it when it came to tuning, inquiring minds want to know. I may just have to play with it.

Steve W.
Who thinks Sheldon Brown's online gear calculator the best thing since sliced bread

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Who thinks Sheldon Brown's online gear calculator the best thing since sliced bread

HA! I was just thinking about how much I use that page. Fantastic.

I have a 22/32/44 on a road bike; however, I also could also have chosen 24/34/48 right off the shelf if I'd wanted a little higher gear (48x12). With this, I have Ultegra index shifting using the new 12x27 DA 10-spd hub.

I had the complex, down tube, double shifting arrangement that you're talking about on my old-old "15-speed" to get the most usable gears out of it as I could at the time. However, I didn't have nearly as many usable (for me), closely stepped gears and easily shifted gears as I have now.

For example, I now have about 17 gears starting below 1:1 with a step of less than about 14" between gears without any double shifting (except with each single change of the rings when going from low to high).

:)

Sheldon Brown's online gear calculator the best thing since sliced bread

...hmmm...not sure how to take that...

Is sliced bread actually a good thing? All of the best bread I've ever had came in unsliced loaves... ;-)

Sheldon "Only A Memory Since I Went On The Atkins Diet" Brown

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I'm an old fan of 'half-step with granny', just curious, do you run the FD indexed, or friction? How picky was it when it came to tuning, inquiring minds want to know. I may just have to play with it.

Steve W.
Who thinks Sheldon Brown's online gear calculator the best thing since sliced bread
Indexed. Not to fussy, all is okay.