Lower Gears for Surly Troll?
 

Much easier and cheaper to just replace the 26t chainring with a 22t. Only costs $10 to $20.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0507531663.jpg
I highly recommend just buying a 9 speed triple mtb crank.
I use a 44/32/22 and cannot emphasize how perfect this setup is for the weight you think you may be carrying and riding in mountains with long climbs.
I have ridden my Troll a lot in mountains loaded up close to what you are thinking, and the chain rings are just great for me.
The 32 is your general flatish ring, and I only change into the 44 at around 25kph or so, and really appreciate the lower range of the 32 for a heavy bike for most flattish situations, which invariably always have some ups.
The 22 is again great for climbing, and I have spent days and days climbing at 6, 7, 8, 10kph and having the low gear of 22/34 in my case (11-34) gives 16.7 gear inches for a low gear, and I have used this gear a lot, and even if I dont need it always, it is really nice to have.

the other advantage of a mtb triple is that I find that I use all of my gears in the day, I certainly use all of my cassette and I switch from the 22 to 32 to 44 often enough (but not too much) so that I am certain that this has the advantage of spreading the wear around all of the drivetrain, so stuff wears more evenly over time.

the only downside to a mtb triple is that unloaded, the 32 mid ring can be a bit short, so you shift more often between the 32 and 44.--BUT heavily loaded and with climbs, its the best setup in my opinion.

I used to think this crank setup was too low for its own good, but after getting convinced from someone on here who has toured a ton with this setup, AND realizing that for touring in Latin America, one needs to carry more stuff and the gradients are steeper than what one generally sees in N America or Europe--and this is the case, and why I was so happy I went this route for setting up my Troll. I have spent about 4 months touring with this bike, and really can't be happier.

I'd keep the 48/36/26 for future use maybe, as its a great crankset, and as mentioned, its easy peasy to change the 26 to a 24 or 22, giving easier climbing gears at a cheap and easy change, but I find the 48 to be too tall really to be used that much, and anyway, I can still pedal my 44/11 to about 55kph , so thats fine for me, so there is no downside to it.

heck, if your troll is new and has low miles on it, I'd be interested in the 48/36/26 if you decide to go the mtb crank route. I've been wanting to put one on another bike of mine and sometimes keep an eye out for a really good used one.

from your description of your troll, is it in stock shape? ie with the thumbie shifters?
As your bike is from the 9 speed setup, going to 10 speed would need a rear derailleur change, as 10 speed deore stuff has diff cable pull than the 9 speed stuff, so to go to 10, you'd be best off to change the shifters and the rear derailleur for a 10 speed deore model.

My wife has a newer 10 spd troll, and I changed the bars and the shifters to trigger shifters, so just went with the reasonably priced Deore 10 trigger shifters and as always, deore is an excellent mix of cost/performance/longevity , so you cant go wrong.

I guess it comes down to you deciding how much you can spend, but if you really are going to be touring with that much load and in mountainy terrain, you wont go wrong with a mtb triple crank like I did.
You should be able to find 9 speed deore mtb cranks still, but maybe not, so good luck in searching and adding up the totals of parts and mechanic costs if you are not doing it on your own.

Thanks, Tyrion. I bought a used recumbent about a year ago because they looked like fun to ride and I needed someway to get some exercise. I have a good friend that I go motorcycle touring with who is also an avid bicycle tourer. We have some pretty good hills locally and I was *****ing about how hard it was to push the recumbent up a long grade. He dug around in his garage and came up with a 24t inner ring that bolted right on to my bike to replace a 30t ring. It made a nice difference in combination with the biggest 34t rear cog.


I'm not at all knowledgeable about gear ratios as many here seem to be. I considered getting a smaller inner ring but it didn't seem to me that it would make as big a difference as getting a bigger cog in the back. However, considering your input and the replies from DJB, I decided to try the 22t ring. It will be a cheap experiment and I will be overjoyed if that's all it takes to make it possible to haul me and my gear over the mountains on my Troll.

DJB, I really appreciate your input. The voice of your experience rings true. I'll work with the front end of my drive train as you and Tyrion suggested. You mentioned that you might want my present crankset if I decide to replace it. I'll keep you in mind.

David, did you need a shorter bottom bracket when you put the mtn crank on the Troll? OP, you can check your present chainline on the Troll by measuring from the center of the seat tube to the center of the middle chainring. If it is in the 45 mm range, you may need a shorter bottom bracket. If it is around 50 mm, you might be OK.

If you presently have a 5-arm crank, I'm not sure there are any 22 tooth chainrings that will fit it. Usually you have to go to a 4-arm mtn crank.

I agree with others re: changing the crank set to a MTB 42-32-24 or similar. I just substituted a Deore 42-32-24 on my Specialized AWOL (a 30+ lb. 'adventure' bike) for the 50-39-30 road triple that was OEM - big improvement in cruising and climbing gears for my preferred cadence. I have an 11-36 on the back.

Re: the mechanical aspect of this - all I had to do was to lower the FD and install a Hollowtech bottom bracket - used one spacer on the drive side and 2 on the NDS for the best chain line.

When i swapped my Shimano mtb triple for a Sram 42/32/22 I needed a shorter BB. On my old one the front derailer would not shift up to the big chainring.

The chain length should be fine going lower on the small chainring as suggested. You just don't go into for example 22 - 11.
I basically use the lower half of my cassette in the small chainring, all of my cassette in the middle chainring, and the top end of my cassette in the large chainring.

I'm running my Troll 8 speed (11-32 cassette) with a mountain triple 42/32/22. 18 gear-inches seems pretty good to me.

http://ziligy.com/photos/posts/TrollTourReady.jpg

Switching from 26 to 22 in the front will give you a slightly lower gear than switching from 36 to 42 in the back would.

Hi Doug, when I bought my troll used, it had the mtb crank on it, and I did remember your explanation from years past about the chainline--but this was my first bike not using square taper bb, it has the hollowtech external bb, and apparently to do a change from a 48/36/26 Deore to a 44/32/22 Deore using that type of external bb that doesnt have an axle running through the bb, apparently its an easy swap.
A friend of mine with a Troll did the change, from the stock 48/36/26 to a mtb one when he did about half of The Divide Ride trail, and while he had it done at a store, I seem to recall that it was straightforward according to him, although its very possible that some spacers were positioned differently for the mtb crank.

I know when I stripped my Troll down to the frame to give it a complete do over before my first big trip with it (put some Framesaver inside it at the same time) this was my first time disassembling and then putting back together a hollowtech bb, and it was rather straightforward. I had to buy a new bb tool with the right splines for the shells, but it went well overall and I didnt screw anything up.
I have a feeling that the 48/36/26 and the mtb cranks in hollowtech have very similar "chainlines", but I could be wrong.

The fellow on here named Gauvins has changed his 48/36/26 granny to a 22, so it certainly is doable. I may change my wifes 26 to a smaller one one day, but so far, with the 10 speed 11-36 on it combined with the 26inch wheels, the gearing is pretty darn good as is.

we are just about to get some double digit temp days here, nice change.
cheers

here are two neat gearing calculators you can play with, putting in all the proper info to get the "gear inches" of all of the gears on your bike. Change one of the settings to "gear inches" to get the actual number for each speed. Its fun to see exactly what your bike has for gearing, and a black and white, comparable number of your lowest gear.
Your bike as is, where I put 2inch/50mm tires, has a low gear of 18.8, which is pretty good. You'll see in the screen shot I attached of the comparison of the 48/36/26 and 48/36/22, you can see that with the 22t, your low gear is now 15.9


https://www.sheldonbrown.com/gear-calc.html
Bicycle Gear Calculator

I hope you can do some loaded riding tests, because 70lbs of stuff is a heck of a lot of stuff, too much in my opinion, but no matter, you will want a 16 gear inch low, my bike with 16.7 g.i was great having that low gear.
If you havent toured before, reducing the load weight makes a big diff in enjoyment.

Changing the granny ring has traditionally been the easiest and cheapest way to lower gearing. I did it on my first touring bike after I realized I had taken wwwwwaaaay too much stuff , so I reduced my load by a good amount, AND I learned about gearing, and changed the 28t inner granny ring to a 24t, and the two factors made all the difference in the world on my next two trips, where I was very glad of these changes.https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2b78ffa8d7.png

Most mountain cranksets are available either with MTB or hybrid/trekking rings. The crank arms are identical. So you can just buy the other version. You don't even need to change the left crank unless it's a different color.

Square taper cranks, you need to worry about spindle length, but hollow axle cranks have their own spindle, and splined spindles have limited sizes and you're likely to have the right one.

A few weeks ago in that thread about 520 vs LHT, we noticed that with the 11-36 cassettes, one shift lower in the back, Surly chose to go one shift higher in the front by switching from hybrid to road rings. The bottom gear remained about the same and the top gear went up a shift. Why they'd go up one shift instead of down one on touring bikes is a mystery to me.

It's quite possible, however, that the RD has a 22T capacity. The OP would need to swap out large ring as well.

​​​​​Agree with above poster that you can purchase (a) replacement ring(s) for less than the cost if a 42 cassette, which, as with the chainring difference, may not work with the RD on the bike. Depending on which Deore RD, you may be limited to a 34T cog, which could probably be pushed to 36.

I toured with a Troll for a few years and liked it very much. I could climb walls with a 24-34.

the one thing with replacement rings is that often, one can purchase a whole new crankset for not much more than just new rings. I may be wrong on that, but especially if a new crankset comes with a new bb, which often you see they do, then often the difference isnt that much, or worth it in the end.

I was lucky and found some used , but new essentially, replacement 32 and 22 rings for my XT 44/32/22, but that was complete luck. I tend to keep on top of drivetrain maintenance, cleaning and measuring chain length, so expect to go a long time before I need to replace those rings--at which time I may have forgotten where the bought ones are!

my past experience with changing out granny gear chainrings for smaller ones is that so far, I've never had to make any fd changes, the triple fd generally have had enough shape of the cage to work fine with smaller rings, ie going from a 28 to a 24 back on my old 7 speed tourer which I did in maybe 91 or 92, newer bikes going from 30 to 28 or 26 (9 speed bikes) so I suspect changing the 26 to a 22 will work fine right away.

yes, with the existing chain as is, one shouldnt use the 22 front with the smallest cogs in the back, but as always, the worst thing that can happen is a bit of chain rub on a pulley, so no big deal, and anyway, it's easy to just not go past half or three quarters of the cassette in the granny gear anyway.
The only thing with just this change is that when you shift up to the 36 from the 22, with the 14 tooth difference between them, you have to shift down two gears at the back, but not really a hardship, and especially with trigger shifters, its a matter of "snick snick". Its the same with one of my bikes when I changed the 50/39/30 to 50/39/26, I generally do two downshifts when I go from the 26 to the 39 given the 13t difference--but with sti shifters, its as simple as a single sweep of the shifter and two gears are done.

overall, this is why jumps between chainrings of 10 or so teeth is nicer, as the transitions are smoother with less rear shifting needed, but in the end, changing the granny ring is still the easiest and cheapest solution--BUT I still say that a mtb triple would be more suited for this fellow if he is really going to have such a heavy load.

at the extreme end of low gearing, your comment on the 24/34 and climbing walls makes me always think of the very few times with my troll 22/34 combo (that gives 16.7 gear inches with the 50mm tires on it), that I had to stand in first gear to get up hills, paved ones. One time I had to stop every minute or two to give my heart a break, it was just not doable for more than that short time, I was at my max heartbeats whatever that is, but this was after thousands of kilometres of riding in predominantly mountains day after day, so I was in very good climbing shape.

The gradient must have been over 20%, but I realize that this is particular to Latin America--BUT I would add that there have been countless times here in Canada, or in France even, where short little steep bits have made me grateful for that 22/34 combo, and just nice to be able to be seated and NOT put a big amount of torque into your knees, even if just for 10 seconds.

Wow !! I woke up this AM to find a plethora of good advice and information in this thread. Thanks folks for your generous input. You have saved me a lot of time, money and aggravation. I ordered a 22t granny ring.

Yes, I am a brand new newbie to bicycle touring. I've spent the winter months getting my body in shape, getting the Troll set up, and accumulating equipment. I know from backpacking and motorcycle camping experience that I tend to over pack. The 60-70 pound load was an intentionally generous estimate. Once I get the gearing right and find a saddle that's tolerable, I'll pack everything up and see what it all weighs and then see what I can live without.

We have a lot of varied and beautiful country with great roads here in Oregon. I'm chomping at the bit to get out there and experience it all at low speed.

Before going to bed tonight, ask what saddle you should get. You'll wake up with even more responses...

chuckle

the most important thing will be simply get your arse out there on your bike and ride regularly. Get the positioning right, and all that stuff that only comes with riding regularly, and you'll get it sorted out.

Hah! I've seen what happens on motorcycle forums when someone asks about the "best oil" or the "best tires." No thanks. I wouldn't want to be responsible for what ensues if I posed that question.

Basics
 

::Bigger... more teeth on the back cog and/or a smaller count on the front chain ring , or , ...

Internal gear box cranks: ... chain ring & crank arms are on opposite sides of transmission,

So chainring turns at a different rate than the crank arms ./ pedals..

Same on Internal gear hubs cog can turn at different rate than the hubshell... you make into a wheel ....




...


..

My partners Troll runs this https://www.bike-discount.de/en/buy/...ctalink-658383 with the 22 replaced with a 20T (which takes a bit of filing of the spider and the bolt heads to clear the chain plates)https://www.amazon.com/aMTBer-20T-Ch.../dp/B00CDW9CC0 and a Sunrace 11-40T rear SunRace | CSM980 It works OK with the standard Deore rear derailleur, but needs a new front one to suit the 40T https://www.bike-discount.de/en/buy/...p-swing-209816 It's able the cross chain both ways, just! Really huge gear range though, over 800%.