Thomas: don't overthink things. A 38 X 11 with a (by Rivendell standards) skinny 38 mm tire will give you a 97" top gear. FWIW, the top gear on the only bike I own with multiple gears is 89" (42 X 14 X 29.5") and I never use this. The other 3 are fixies with, seriatim, 76", 70", and 69" gears, and I rarely overrun these.
If you replace the 38 with a 40 or 42 or even a 44, everything will remain pretty much as it was before, except that all the ratios on the "big" ring will be bumped up correspondingly. But a 38 t to 44 to jump is still, in the cosmic scheme of things, Not a Big Deal. At most, you will have to add a link of chain. Patrick Moore, perversely and very deliberately shifting 42/28 X 14-28 (10 speed) with Bar Cons pulling a short cage DA 7410, in iconoclastic ABQ, NM. (Oh: The 42 and 28 are in middle and inner positions; the outer has a guard; 46 or 48, IIRC; forget nominal teeth, but way bigger than usually required. And the reason for the exceptionally big guard is that I filed off the outer stop on the 7410 fd. (And for why? Long story; basically to get it to shift to the outer on a modern mtb triple, since replaced) and the excessively big guard keeps the chain from overshooting.) -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
