I'm also around 165lbs and the steep hills around here keep me in shape. Almost all of my miles these days are on a pair of Rohloff bikes and a fixie, but I'm in the habit of maintaining and modifying derailer bikes for my wife and a few friends, plus I have a few beloved derailer bikes in the collection. Here is my current thinking on derailer setups:
110/74 double or triple with bash guard in place of outer ring, 46/30 or 44/28. 8-speed cassette, 12-34 Reasoning: 6/7/8 speed use the same chain. They are cheap, reliable, and available with a master link. 8/9/10 use the same hub spacing. So 8-speed is the magic overlap of availability, simplicity, and affordability. Shimano 8-speed bar-end shifters are still available and have a friction bailout. I like indexed bar-ends for drop bar bikes where I really want the shift to be right the first time. For upright bikes, you can mount the Shimano bar-end shifters on Thumbies at great expense, but these days I've been combing the local bike collective for 80's friction thumbshifters. I put the classic Suntours on my wife's bike plus a friends, and I just picked up the Shimano equivalent for another friend's city bike. For an upright bar where the shifters are always easily accessible from the grip, I'm fine with friction - especially on spouse's and friends' bikes for which I would otherwise be responsible for keeping the indexing adjusted! It looks like 10-speed will be available for a good long time, so you can always update the cassette if 8-speed goes the way of the Dodo. AND: weirdly enough, Sunrace's 10-speed bar-end shifters have a friction option! (The 8-speeds don't for some reason.) So 2x10 remains palatable in the future if 8-speed becomes a parts-hunting endeavor. All of my favorite crank options (besides Rene Herse) are on Soma's web store under Touring Cranks: https://store.somafab.com/touringcranks.html If I were buying a crankset new and it had to be square taper, I'd probably go with the IRD Defiant and its 94bcd, which might limit you to 30t granny. But 30-34 is a nice low climbing gear for a road bike! I actually really like external BB (Hollowtech) cranksets because they are so easy to remove for travel. So if I were building a road bike right now, I'd probably put the IRD Lobo on it. 110/74 double, which gives you all the options, and I think it's slightly cheaper and slightly better-looking than the Sugino OX cranks. Finally, 11-tooth cogs are one tooth too small for me. 12-tooth wears out fast enough! As goes your cog, so goes your chain, so if you skip the 11-tooth your cassette and chain should both last longer - on the order of 10%. This might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I think you end up with a nice wide-range cassette and an all-around ring with a granny bailout, using durable, reliable parts that are inexpensive to replace when you wear them out. Daniel M Berkeley, CA -- 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.
