Belteshazzar

Summary: looking to get a road bike, many people recommend a triple for my use pattern, but I'm not too impressed with the triples I see. Looking for gearing advice.

Details: A few years ago I purchased my first bike in a long time. I told the LBS folks I had a limited budget and would mostly be commuting, but also wanted to allow for longer road rides and maybe even a century. They recommended a Trek 7.3 FX which was on sale (along with bar ends for alternate hand positions). The FX has served me well over many miles, commutes, long rides, steep mountain passes, and a few centuries. I replaced the worn-out 32c tires with 28c, wore out and replaced the cassette and crankset, and it's still going strong.

But when I do those rides I get a lot of people saying in disbelief "you did THAT on THAT BIKE? Wow." I can tell there would be advantages to getting a "real" road bike, and before next spring I'd like to do that.

I'd be looking for something durable, with endurance geometry. Someday I'd like to try a little light touring, so rack mounts are a plus. I'd mostly use it for 25-70 mi recreational rides, solo or with a friend. There'd be the occasional century charity ride. I'll probably stick with my FX for commuting.

I'm undecided about a lot of particulars, but for right now I'd just like to get advice about gears.

The FX has a nice wide gear range with relatively large jumps (48/38/28, 11-32 8spd). The 11-13 shift is a bigger jump than I'd prefer but it's not a big deal. The 15-18 is somewhat annoying. Other than that I'm fine with the gaps on the 11-32; I'm not riding in a peloton and trying to fine-tune cadence. Of course most bikes I'm looking at have narrower gearing.

I can sacrifice a bit of range on both ends but not too much. One of my favorite rides is a 47.5 mile loop starting from where I live; half of that is nearly level, but it also includes an 8-mile segment that climbs almost 3000 feet. When I go up that I'm very glad to have my lowest gears, and though of course most folks on road bikes zip by me, there are others who I spin past while they mash their knees. On the flip side, even just around town, I think having a high gear for downhill helps me deal better with traffic.

Now, I guess standard advice in the past would have been "steep rides? not an amazing athlete? thinking of some touring? Get a triple!" But sometimes these days that doesn't seem like much of an advantage. For instance, the Trek Domane comes with 12-30 10spd and either 50/34 or 50/39/30. The third crank only really buys you one lower gear and more redundant combinations.

One collection of gears that sounds fairly ideal to me is a 50/34 crankset plus Shimano HG61 12-36 9spd 29er cassette- just barely less range on each end than my hybrid triple, without the two large jumps or the third chainring. Some people are actually doing that with touring bikes. But that cassette is >=1.5x as heavy as anything else, is incompatible with many rear derailleurs, and is quite a stretch for almost all the rest (they say use a long tension screw, turn it all the way, and expect problems if you mistakenly cross-chain).

Suggestions?

Lazyass

Why are you not impressed with triples?? I'd rather have a triple with a close spaced cassette than a compact with a 12-36. I can't stand wide spaced cassettes.

Belteshazzar

I guess what I said about that got lost in the TL;DR. It's because it seems the triples I see on "endurance" or even "commuter" oriented bikes are, like the Domane, only buying at most one extra gear on the low end compared to compact cranks. It just adds a lot of redundant gear combinations while its lowest gear is still practically on a par with the FX's third gear.

Now that's not as true for triples on touring bikes, e.g. the Novara Randonee has a tremendously huge range with its 44/32/22 crankset. There isn't nearly as much redundancy, and the lowest gear is two gears lower than the FX's. But the high end is slightly less than I'd like, the bike is kinda on the heavy / less responsive side if I'm not normally using it for touring, and I shouldn't usually need the hyper-low gears.

Also I'm coming from a bike which had 11-13-15-18-21-24-28-32, and except for 11-13 and 15-18, that didn't bother me. It's possible that 12-34 might be enough range for me, and that's obviously easier to make work than the 12-36

Leinster

Are you completely opposed to an Apex WiFli group with a compact? 50/34 with a 12-32 10spd will give you big range, a slightly less low lowest gear, and close spacing in your upper range.

RollCNY

OP
Asking what others recommend for gearing is like asking what dress we think your wife should wear. It is entirely subjective.

In your mind, a triple only buys one lower gear than a compact. In my mind, it buys you the ability to tighter space gearing, and it gives you a 39 ring that many people love cruising around in. The classic problem of a compact is the 50 feels too hard and the 34 too easy for general cruising around. This means a great deal of jumping big ring to small ring.

The gaps you describe in your 11-32 8 speed cassette would drive me nuts, and there is no solution I could imagine, for me, that that would be an ideal crank choice for that cassette. This thought that a compact crank with a huge range cassette replaces a triple is mistaken. A triple gets you range, and close increments. IMO, a compact crank is great with a 12-23, which is what my rain bike has. This gives you linear shifting with no overlap (if you don't cross-chain). But that option doesn't work for you.

So I think that you are wrong to discount a triple. I am not saying that to be argumentative, only expressing an opinion on your posts, which I did actually read. Twice even.

Clem von Jones

The argument for double chainrings is logical, i.e. less redundancy and weight, but it ignores the pleasure of spinning the largest possible front ring in any situation. In the mountains the 50 will often be too big and the 34 will often be too small, and you'll occasionally wish you had a slightly bigger ring than 50. Doubles make sense for racing but that's about it IMO. Anyway it isn't that big of a deal. If you want to try a double do it, you can always swap out parts later. If going double I would be tempted to order one of those hard-to-find Stronglight cranks that come in a variety of combinations including 52/36. You have to pay shipping from France though. For a cassette I'm thinking you'll regret not having the 11, so maybe 11-32 or thereabouts. I have one of those 29er cassettes on a mountain bike but the wheels and tires are very heavy, I don't think you'll need anything near 36 on a road bike even when loaded. Why not use your FX for touring and get a lightweight fast road bike?

Belteshazzar

Leinster: No, I'm not completely opposed. That lowest gear is 21% higher than the FX's, but I might be able to make do.

Options so far are

1) use a triple that actually gives the lower range and not just redundancy- this likely means either get a touring bike or replace a crankset, since almost all the non-touring triples I see are 50/39/30 or such
2) try to get lower range with a compact by trying to install a cassette with a very large cog, either by operating beyond stated derailleur capacity limits and putzing with tension screws or by installing a MTB rear derailleur
3) just live with higher gearing, in which case it seems to me like a 12-32 and a standard compact crank make more sense than a triple. Get in better shape before trying my favorite "Category 1-esque" climb again. Live with the limits the gear range will set on routes and inclines when touring, if and when I do end up touring.

RollCNY: no need to worry about me feeling you're argumentative; I'm glad to have your opinion and I expected there'd be some back and forth. It could well be that the reason the other jumps haven't bothered me is that rolling around on my hybrid for long rides by myself I've usually been more concerned about covering distance and terrain rather than pace. In the future with a real road bike it's possible I might focus on pace more on my own or decide I want to get involved in club rides, and then find that I cared about close spacing more than I do now.

But still, outside of one lower gear when used with the same cassette (and less than that when compared to a compact with a wider cassette), as I look at charts of gain ratios I'm not yet seeing what a 50/39/30 triple buys me in the age of 2x10sp compacts. Are the chainring shifts avoided by having the 39 cog really that frequent, and is shifting chainrings really that much of a problem? Yes, you can also get smaller increments- by switching chainrings and always having to think about which nearly-redundant gear combination is ever so slightly higher than the other. Otherwise, the only difference between the gaps in a 12-30 cassette like the Domane triple uses and those in a 12-32 cassette like what Leinster suggests using with a compact are minor ones at the lower end.

Again, wider triples like those on touring bikes (e.g. the 48/36/26 on the Trek 520, or the still wider one on the Randonee I already mentioned) seem like they have a much more substantive reason for existing.

Leinster

FWIW, I've found on my spare bike the 39 with a 13-26 cassette leaves me with nearly the same lack of a flat cruising gear as my 34 with a 12-27. If I were to go back to a triple, I'd prefer it be with my old 52-42-30, as the 42 gave me the most comfortable range without cross-chaining.

Willbird

If your looking at doubles the 5800 105 crank can run a wide range of chainrings, compact or conventional.

It seems most entry level road bikes now are compact cranks , I went through some of your mental gyrations until I realized that......any other option is out of my "first road bike" price range really, I'm buying a 2014 Fuji 1.5 and will focus on building a bicyclist to ride it :-)...at this stage the rider (me) will be the biggest weakness that needs addressed :-)

flatlander_48

I originally spec'ed my bike with a 10sp double Centaur: 53/39 and 12-25. This was fine for the flats and reasonable hills. I would usually cruise on the 53 and in the middle of the cassette. I did some rides with a club and the routes usually had some short very steep hills. My cadence got so slow I worried about being able to unclip in time. I fixed the problem by going to a Centaur/Chorus mix: 53-42-30 and 12-25. That worked very well. I would have stayed with a triple when I went to Chorus 11sp, but Campagnolo didn't offer one at the time. To my mind, the triple worked just about as well as the double, so I never considered it to be a disadvantage.

RollCNY

Again, incredibly personal. I have read many posters on BF loving their 39 ring. But you asked if front shifting is a pain, and it depends on your level of finickiness. I don't like 16 tooth jumps, and 14 teeth is noticeably smoother, at least in the mid tier and lower end groups that I have used. My favorite double is a 50/36, but that is because of my terrain and riding style. It isn't that compacts shift horribly, it's just they don't shift as smoothly as tighter spaced cranks.

Gallo

I ride a 50 34 with 11-28 there have been a couple of climbs i wanted a triple and even at times dreamed of a quad. But even in that deep dark place the I have never not been able to make the climb. It seems to me with your switching to a road bike with some geometrical and weight advantages you would never use the third ring except during a bonk. Drinking enough water and eating enough prevents this. For a touring bike I would want a triple and my new mountain bike that has a double I think would be better served with a triple but not my road bike compact double works fine for me. my two cents

Belteshazzar

Clem: pardon my ignorance, what's the pleasure in using the largest possible front cog? is it smoother power delivery or something?

Since on a 10x2 compact the gears afforded by the two chainrings without crosschaining generally overlap, the only sense I can make of your statement that the 50 is too large and the 34 too small is if you're talking about it being difficult to stay with that chainring through large changes in grade.

Probably the main trouble with using the FX for touring is that even with bar ends your hand positions are limited and somewhat awkward if you're biking continually, and I have had some history of trouble with my right wrist and forearm (tendonitis). I may be able to do a little touring with it but I'd have to be careful. Also, I don't know about carrying substantial weight up front with this fork and its mounts.

I may not be in the market for a full-blown touring bike now, I don't have the budget for carbon, and I'm looking for a relatively upright position I can be comfortable with e.g. on a century ride or the climb I mentioned above. AFAIK among the bikes that doesn't rule out are some of the more relaxed normal entry-level bikes (e.g. Giant Defy?), the aluminum "endurance"/"randoneeur" bikes (e.g. Domane 2.0), and a handful of others (Novara Verita?). Any of these are plenty fast enough for me (I'm no speed demon and I could stand to shave some more grams off of me before getting too worried about the grams on the bike), and many of them are capable of a little light touring in a pinch. Plenty of details still to figure out, esp. nail down my budget, but just wanted to figure out things like triple vs compact first.

Willbird: same here. build a better cyclist.

flatlander: well, I may have done a few centuries but I'm a long ways from being able to tackle my favorite 8 mile 3000 foot climb with a 53/39 12-25

Belteshazzar

RollCNY: understood. I imagine I'm probably on the less finicky side, but like so many other personal questions, sounds like a test ride may give me some more concrete ideas.

Gallo: Yeah, the performance advantage when I get the new bike is a bit of an unknown factor for me right now that does play a part in all this.

(I did bonk the first time I did that ride, which made the last 1000 feet of climbing a difficult process indeed and taught me to be more careful about nutrition.)

I do want to have a little more margin than "I can make it through this deep dark place and finish the climb" - much of my cycling is cross-training to give my joints a break from long runs when they need it, so I try not to let the cadence drop too low.

mcmoose

If you go with the Domane 2.0, that would give you a 50/34 up front and an 11-32 in back. I found that, when transitioning from my hybrid (7.3 FX) to my road bike (Lexa S), I didn't need *quite* as low as a gear for the same slope... the road bike is a bit lighter and its geometry helps with climbing (at least for me).

I'd suggest taking the Domane for a test ride and trying it out on your "typical" hills (or at least hills of a similar grade). That will give you a better idea of how the "on paper" gear comparisons translate into perceived effort.

Good luck!

gerard2013

I'll second that. You'll find you won't need as low a gear when you're on a lighter bike, it makes climbing easier. My Domane, with 34 front and 30 back gear, takes about the same amount of effort to climb the 15% grade by my house as my touring bike did with its 32 front and 32 back.

bobbyl1966

The bike trail i ride have elevation from 700 feet to 900 feet. How i can found what grade is the hills. Yesrterday i tried one hill with my steel road bike. I go uphill with the 53 on the crank and 25 on the rear cog. I go uphill with speed 8 to 10 miles. I tried twice that hill. The thrid time i put the 39 front ring and the 25 rear cog and i felt is was harder to pedal. Is should feel better than the 53 big ring. Why can happens that. And i want put 9 speeds cassete include the 16 and 18 cog, But i want have tight cassete is make 13-23 cassete. And is lose much speed if the cassete not start from 12 but start from 13? If i found crank 53/39/30 is good for 13-23 cassete? 30ring and 23 cog is go give me good low gear for hills?

superslomo

The triple thing is now largely academic. I have one, love it, want another one on my next road bike, but you just can't buy a bike built up with a triple group for the road anymore, other than the most low-end groups with 8 or 9 cogs.

It seems you do use the gears you have now, why would you NOT want a triple on the next bike? I am sort of confused.

I keep myself in the 39 most of the time, use the whole cassette on that ring, and basically shift down to the 30 when things go steeply uphill, and use the 53 when things pitch down hard, just to keep my legs spinning. Everyone tells me to get a compact instead, and I just don't see the upside... other than actually being able to find a complete bike instead of having to go with a more involved process of buying bits and having them assembled.

I may go with the latter anyhow, just because I'm contrary.