I ride my Sam everywhere I go, which is mostly to and from work and around town, about 2000 miles a year. When I was building it up I got the 26/40/bashguard Sugino crank from Riv and an 11-28 (32?) 8 speed cassette. I delayed putting a front derailer on it until I saw my usage patterns. After a year I can see: I am in gears 5-7 95% of the time. I go up to 8 occasionally and grind in 1 or 2 occasionally on my rare long rides. I have "stick" shifted into the granny front once on an insanely steep and long (for around here) hill last summer. I had not thought about the stress on chain or rear derailer of the 40-28 combo, but I use it so rarely enough that I am not stressed.
So far, the no front derailer, have a granny if I need it, basically 1x8 system is working. Edwin in hilly, but not mountainous Nashville, where I mostly ride around town and near-in country. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.