My (preowned) Tern Link came with a nice Litepro crankset but a 52t chainring. It rendered both ends of the gear range sub-optimal; I got stuck on hills and never used the smallest cassette sprockets.

anyway, long story short. I swapped in a 44t narrow wide chainring (AliExpress, maybe €9?) and with the 9-speed 11-32 cassette the gearing is now absolutely perfect.

I don’t run out of gears in an urban setting and can pretty much get up anything local to me.

the bike is rolling on 1.75” Schwalbe Marathon tyres and has a 406 wheelset.

Anyway, this is by far the best 1x9 combination I have found for my needs. I know we’re all different but I thought I would share my joy!

Nice mod. Adjust the gearing to whatever works best for you, and it’s definitely time to ditch that ugly dork disc.

I‘m more than happy to continue to dork away.

With the amount of abuse this bike gets, not having to worry about a bent derailleur going into the spokes is reassuring to me.

I appreciate that we are all different and that some people get weirdly wound up about clear plastic spoke protection.

Hahaha that little bit of plastic won't stop much. If you have a decent derailleur and keep it properly tuned you don't really have to worry about it going over or anything. If it does get bad enough the brittle plastic will likely just shatter and still damage the derailleur. If you don't abuse bikes they will also last longer obviously commuting and travel can take their toll but simple maintenance will go a long way.

If, unbeknownst to me, the rear derailleur has taken a whack somewhere, that spoke protector would definitely stop the top pulley going into the spokes.

It’s pretty pliable plastic.

Always good to see folders modded for improvement.

I modded my folder for 400% range gearing, and I need every bit of it, but I live in a place with longish hills.

Keep the spoke protector disc. My Dahon early in its life had the poor Dahon RD mounted well forward so more lateral chain flex there, and the chain dropped between the cassette and spokes and tore up a couple, and all eventually failed there. I can't recall if I removed it or it never had. I always used to remove them. But I put a plastic mostly-clear new one on, it had faint rings on the surface, and on every one of my bikes I service now. Most especially on a Litespeed that I brought back to new, with special wheels with PBO spokes, would be an expensive fix for those, I found a completely clear protector to mount; Most protector discs clip to the spokes, but I didn't want to risk abrasion to those softer spokes, so this disc fit on the freehub body behind the cassette, perfect.