Originally Posted by
SlinkyWizard
Oh god, as much as I want to get into my sweet spot, at the moment, I don't want to spend extra money to get there, I didn't realize it was so scientific, at least from my perspective,
maybe I got to try a little harder to adjust my sweet spot to the big chain ring, 18T
Yeah, don't spend any money on new gearing now.
Your 50 front - 20 rear gear combination should not be making noise. It's
out of adjustment. Does the 50-22 make noise too?
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It's not a good idea to switch just one chainring to a different size. They are a matched set, with the pickup pins on the side of the big ring, and the machined edges of the big ring teeth designed to work with that small ring. (It's workable, I suppose, but not optimal.)
Chainring changes are proportional. Changing 34 to 36 is 36/34 = 1.06, or 6%. So the same cadence would increase speeds by 6%, with a 6% harder effort, of course. It basically shifts the blue charts I posted to the right by about 1.5 kph at flat road speeds: 25 kph goes to 26.5, for example. That's some help for staying in the small ring at a bit higher speed, but it's a fairly minor change.