Originally Posted by
treebound
I probably missed it, do you have any details on your gearing setup? Do you stop and manually change the chain, or is there a derailleur hiding in the pic someplace? Looks interesting.
ps, I clicked on your page link and it came up as suspended, oops.
I'll do a post on it later when I've had time to thoroughly vet it. Despite being almost heresy in the touring world, I fell in love with singlespeed touring and I spend 95% of my time in the "big" gear, which is 31/18. I previously had 30/19, but found it a little too spinny, so I went up two teeth.
The "small" gear is 24/25. The bigger tooth count is in the rear. Endless Cogs makes that giant 25T cog, and with the cogs mashed right up next to each other on my cassette hub, I have a perfect chainline to the two chainrings. 24/25 and 31/18 have the exact same number of teeth, so my chain length remains identical.
So, when I want to "switch gears," I undo my QR and the tensioner (about to be replaced with a Surly Tuggnut) just pops out. I move the chain by hand, and then pop the tensioner back on, and do up the QR, and I'm good to go with a climbing gear. I only use this ratio 5% of the time, but when I'm staring down a steep mountain climb, it is excellent to be "mountain-capable."
I love singlespeed. This setup neatly overcomes a major limitation without sacrificing simplicity, durability, reliability, etc. If anything, it's more reliable, since I have an extra ratio if I bend a chainring or something!