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Old 03-08-05, 12:05 PM
  #2  
Michel Gagnon
Year-round cyclist
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Montréal (Québec)
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There is no "touring group" per se.

The typical approach used by most manufacturers is to use a "moutain" rear wheel, cassette and derailleur (11-32), and a "road" triple crankset – 105 or Ultegra – with a road derailleur and STI levers. Two flaws of this practice:
- gears are too high and too spread apart for ideal use (25 to 127 gear-inches with 9 or 10 duplicates... and 3-4 gears that are way too high);
- STI levers are often matched with v-brakes using Travel-Agents... which tend to be cable eaters.

In my humble view, a better setup would be to use a mountain crankset (44-34-22 or something like that). A person could then either use a 11-27 cassette to build the bicycle for light touring or commuting or a 11-32 cassette to build a true tourer.

Then use either bar-end shifters (or downtube shifters), or use STI with cantilever brakes.
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