Bicycle tweak of the week
In an effort to change my climbing speed from glacial to merely slow, I’m trying to see if giving myself a lower gear would help or just make me slower. So I’ve moved the 42t chainwheel out to the edge of the crank and added a 34t chainwheel behind it, under the hope that a couple of more low gears can keep me pedalling a bit faster so I won’t completely stall when I slow down under load.
It’s been a real pain to set up. The noname Sugino crankset (bought from ebay) I’ve got on the mlcm has a ridiculously narrow Q measurement, so if the derailer cage isn’t adjusted just right the outer plate rubs against the drive-side crankarm. But the outer plate of the derailer cage (the derailer is a cheap Sora 3400) is sculpted, which results in a very narrow throat, which ends up with the chain rubbing against it if it isn’t set up just right in the other direction.
And my 42t chainwheel isn’t completely flat, but shimmies in and out by about 1/10th mm, so I’ve really got to play with exact tolerances to make everything work.
And while I’m doing all this, I need to work with the cable tension so that the brifters will properly brift the derailer to one side or another.
Oy.
I do have one option I can do if I can’t get these to work; the Trek has a Truvativ crankset on it (a 3-ring Touro that I’ve converted into a 2-ring superalpine (42/28) arrangement) that I can pull and put onto the mlcm. This will at least give more room between the big ring and the crankarm, even though it’s at the cost of 2-3cm’s worth of Q.