Anyone using a double crank?
 

What's your toothcount on the rings?

Just curious what everyone uses.

Yes, I have two bikes with doubles. One is 42/26 (it's actually a 110/74 triple with rings on just the middle and inner positions) the other is a compact double 46/34.

I used a 39/26 with a 12-28 cassette on my Southern Tier last winter. I used it with a very light load and a road bike, and it worked out well. I left it in Florida at my daughter's house so I would have a bike there. I built up another with one 42/26 and a 13-28 freewheel.

The crank was originally a triple, but I run it with no big ring making it a sub compact double.

I'm running a 12-36 along with a compact 50/34 up front. Works fine.

I've been using a 28/42 with an 11-32 cassette.

44/30 w 12-28 8spd. I wish Shimano still made a 12-32 8 spd

Two of the bikes that I've used for touring have doubles. One is a Cannondale crit bike with a 52/39 crankset and the other is a Bike Friday with 60/42. The latter is equivalent to 45/31 with 700c wheels. My main bike for touring has a 50/46/30 triple.

Friend , British, back before the 11 and 12 tooth top gears were offered
We toured California coast, SF to the Mexican Border, he on a TA Cyclo-tourist crank,
now a classic..
the main gear a 50t, the granny bailout gear, a 28t..

Now I have a double crank on my Brompton,
but it is a planetary reduction gear, so the one chain ring is big
as the wheel is small.
so the same 50t, in low range , the reduction gear
acts like it was a 20t.. the crank-arms turn faster than
the chainring..

I used to run a 50/34 and a 12-36. It wasn't a massive annoyance but I found myself shifting the front and then having to shift the rear back into smaller rings after each drop to the inner ring on the front. When I wore my rings down I just bought a triple and a tighter cassette for the rear. I like the idea of smaller rings on a compact double rather than the bigger rings that seem the norm.

I might build up my mountain bike with a 42/26 double that uses a triple with a bashguard for an outer ring. Might even be able to use short cage derailleurs for increased ground clearance.

When I ride my 700c I basically use the inner two rings unless I am riding a long way downhill. So I think I could get by with the right rig. But I don't really see the point of dropping a ring when triples are cheap, and the added weight is pretty minimal. Also, I think the double would probably tempt me to use 9 speed or 10 speed cassettes, while I think 8 is about optimal, though I could use 8, I am just saying I think I would be tempted otherwise.

If these guys made an all silver double I would be tempted to use it one a 26" touring build just for the bling.

http://www.whiteind.com/cranks/mountaincranks.html

The VBC can probably take a sturdy 74 bcd stainless inner gear with their 5 bolts
so a 24/46 would also be practical.. and the granny gear long wearing..

24/46 is a big gap. Keeping the difference between the rings at 16t will allow compact double derailleurs to be used with ease.

I find the middle ring on most triples to be a bit too small and the the big ring to be a bit too big. So I decided to split the difference. Once I'd done that by installing a 42t ring on the middle position I repositioned the crank to minimize the chain angle when using the middle and inner rings, making the outer position almost useless. I could keep it as a chain guard, but choose to simply remove it.

my new touring bike is going to have a mountain double on it -- 42/26. I thought the 42 was really small until I realized that my high gear 42-11 will develop more gear inches than the old 52-14 standard from back in the day. Who really hammers along in a big gear on a touring bike anyway?

I do too. You can find them on ebay now and then I think.

The 11-32 8 speed Shimano has a big gap right in the heart of the cassette from the 15 to the 18 tooth. My workaround was to take a 13-26 cassette, remove the 14 cog, and insert a 32 cog at the end, with this result: 13-15-17-19-21-23-26-32. Big jump between the 26 and 32, but the gaps elsewhere are minimal.

Nun, you are right about having to do something to broaden the gap. I do ride mostly in the middle, but saying that and riding out without the top gear would be another thing. Also I tend to be a tripple and touring cassette guy, or freewheel. But with the double an 11 high gear would work pretty well, and that is a lot easier to come by.

I make frames so that makes me an unparalleled bike genius, except I really know not that much about the mechanics (or much else) unless I have used the parts already.

1) My White hubs are really extreme in the wheel build the drive side spokes look like they go to the centre line they are so extreme. So even if I ran a 8 speed cassette, I would be paying the spoke angle penalty anyway. So a 9 would make more sense, but can you tell whether that requires a less practical to work on chain?

2) Anyone know whether one can build the VCB up on an Eno crank. I already have one of those. In fact, all that is required is to drill the holes for an inside ring on any single speed crank, I guess, then use a spaced bolt set. The Eno I have is 38 for Rohloff use, so I would probably need all new rings anyway. Any thoughts.

I always thought it would be cool to do an all White bike. They make nice stuff and one can nearly do a groupo, one can do a White Paul groupo, to some extent.

Well I thought I could make your day, but the 8 speed options in Cyclotourism cassettes are no longer offered at Harris.

They have a great looking cyclotourism cassette in 9 speed, and they have a cheapish standard 29er cassette that is 12-36, HG31. I think that would work great with a triple on my 9 speed. In fact it comes in two versions with a 12 or 11 high gear. The latter would be best for a double I suppose? There are some nice options really cheap for 7 speed, which is currently what I am riding in freewheel config. But I don't see myself getting a 7 speed cassette rig any time soon.

Cyccommute.

By the way, I would like apologize to Cyccommute. I believe I have referred to him in many threads over the 5500 posts I have as "Cycocommute", or something similar. Or maybe I was thinking that, but luckily copied his name with shortcuts. If I did do the bad thing, I did not intend to. It is usually in the context of his large gear downhill exploits so it might have seemed that I was making a bad joke. I just didn't realize till now how it was spelled.

dont worry Mr D, I've called him Anthony Perkins (Psycho) before and I dont think he thought my sense of humour was funny. Just goofing with words.

my old Rockhopper is 8 speed, and I use a 11-28 as I like the smaller jumps (but of course, still with a mtn crank 42/32/22)

a 42-11 is I think about a 100 g.i. on 26ers, and I run out of gears at about 55kph which is ok by me, given that I dont think I've had that bike above 65 or 70k or so and it spends the vast majority of its life at 15-30kph (and I dont like running at 11 or 12 that much, especially 11 as it feels "rough")

Modified my old crank to 52/34 rings - That combined with my 34t bail out free wheel gear make a good combination for some of the hills around central Texas - Yes I need a Med to Long cage derailleur - And yes I do have to be careful when shifting - But its that or carry my bike to the top of some hills...

Good to know, I'm not even sure I ever wrote it. Just kinda gulped when I saw how it was really spelled.

Fully loaded in Europe a couple years ago with 50/34 + 12/27.

It was brutal.

I tried that combination and never got it to shift reliably without dropping the chain. I decided that 42/26 was enough and about as big of a gap as I wanted. If I have an 11 T on the rear I find a 39/26 to be fine and that is a joy to shift.

One of my bikes has a 42/26 with an 11/34 rear cassette. The crank is a Sugino 110/74 triple, the rings are TA and the BB cartridge is Phil Wood. The rear cassette is Shimano XT and the hub is a White Industries MI5 and the rim is a Velocity Dyad. As staehpj1 says with bigger than 16t gaps the shifting becomes an issue, derailleurs are running out of spec and dropped chains are a problem.

Another bike that I tour on has a 46/34 FSA front crank, the 46t ring is Sugino. The rear is cassette is SRAM Rival 11/25 on a Dura Ace hub and Mavic Open pro rims. I plan to go to a SRAM 12/36 rear cassette and SRAM MTB derailleur.

When I bought my new Miyata 1000 in 1985, I asked the store owner to swap the triple (which it came with) with a double. I rode it for eight years before finally installing a triple. Climbing became SO much easier. In retrospect, it was a mistake to eliminate a perfectly good triple!

Fast forward 20 years, and both of my bikes (including the Miyata) have triples. Most of the time I ride in my top gears, and switch to my tiny gears for steep hills. I spend little time in the middle ring.

If I had to use a double, I would opt for something similar to the gears I actually ride in, maybe 46/22T in front and 12-36T in back. I'm not mechanically inclined enough to know whether this is even possible. Maybe with friction shifters for the front dérailleur?

acantor (funny, whenever I see your name, I think of as a teenager, I worked at a Cantors Bakery for years...) Im a big fan of triples, my Tiagra fd shifts my 50/39/30 just perfectly well. I even put a new cable on and it was easy to set up and it works flawlessly.
I find I am mostly in the middle ring, up to about 30kph and then I go up to the 50. Loaded however, I would prefer a 46/36/26 or something, along with a 12-30 or thereabouts, and that would give a good low of about 20gi, yet the 36 would still be used for the vast majority of time.

I can kinda understand the idea of doubles being a bit lighter or whatever, but for me the small weight diff is nothing compared to being more flexible and having tighter jumps between chainrings. Plus with the case of my tiagra fd, as I said, it just shifts perfectly well day in, day out and was easy to set up, so I see no giving up shifting ease in the equation.

The idea of a double touring crank appealed to me also at one point and I remember discussing this idea with nun and others of using a triple crank and leaving the big ring off. Like him I found the 42t center ring to be my go to gear for all but climbing steep hills. I first went from 30t to 26t and now have found 24t is not that bad a shift off my 42t. I went with a 12-36 (9 sp) cassette as mentioned above to get the biggest spread of gears and spacing is fairly even but sometimes the jumps left me wishing for in between cogs. I thought about first losing the 52t big ring then I looked at replacing it with a chain guard, then I thought about sizing it to something smaller as I couldn’t see needing 117 GI top gear. The more I analyzed the big ring I saw the 52,42 gave the closest to half steps and I started using the 52 that way. So leaving the 52t gave me at least 5 gears I didn’t have and they are right in the middle of the most common used gears.

So even though I liked the idea of a double the weight of the extra ring for me was a good trade off to get closer spaced gears when I needed them.

I think that an ultra compact double starts to make more sense when you have a very light load and can get by with a narrower range cluster on the rear. For me it was fine and I was even able to use a short cage derailleur, which I considered a plus. I didn't go that route until my base load was 15 pounds and found it more applicable as I went lighter still. I do not know that I would go that route with a much over a 20 pound base unless it was flat land touring.

My use of a double has nothing to do with weight. I found the chain angle on my most used gears was not optimal when using a triple. I was in the "Goldilocks situation". 50t just too big, 36t just too small, 42t just right. I have no need of gears above 100" and found that I mostly used a ratio around 70" and that a 42t chain ring coupled with a 11/34 cassette worked nicely.......It does have the issue of having even more chain angle than a triple at the extremes of the cassette, but I seldom use those and my most comfortable gears now have no chain angle and I don't find myself continually shifting between big and middle rings.

The MTB cranks coming out with 42/26 and 42/28 rings look good for touring.

I have a Nuvinci rear hub. It has a nice, wide range, and I couldn't find a good use for a triple given that every gear could be replicated by either the smaller or larger ring. I was only shifting when I was running out of gears at the top or low end, and that didn't happen very often. So 34/48 double is what I think I'm running, giving me the lowest recommended gear for the Nuvinci and the largest chainring I can use with the chain guard that I haven't gotten around to getting yet.

Nuvinci has a wide enough range, and I was shifting so infrequently, that I removed the front derailer, so while I'm technically running a compact double, in reality the bike stays in the big ring for daily commuting, and when I load it up and hit the road, I manually move it to the small ring until the trip is over.

I'm very happy with the double, but then if I was running a cassette, that might change. As it is, there's no real worrying about optimum shift patterns, and the chainline is always just a little shy of perfect, but that's all thanks to the hub gear.