Quote Originally Posted by Mark View Post
He didn't "Got a new rear derailleur" "front derailleur and front shifter got removed"

Most bikes I've seen the brake (in the UK the rear brake) is integrated with the shifter, is there now a shifterless brake in place of it?

I can understand going to a single front ring, with flat bar shifters going up to a bigger chainring always takes a lot of effort - on my hybrid I ended up just riding in the middle ring all the time (reducing myself to just 7 gears!) because upshifting chainrings was really difficult, you practically had to stop and do it two handed.

Good luck with the new road bike; meet you 7am Chester-le-Street market place, 82 mile ride into Northumberland. Don't worry I'll let you draft me all the way
Doh... completely missed what he was saying for some reason!

I actually prefer the brake lever and shifter to be separate, as you can adjust them better for whatever angles you like. I tend to like my brake levers almost rotated so the lever is down on the bar quite a bit, and that would make shifting tricky at that angle.

As for the front chainrings, it is more effort, but with my shifters really not all that bad. I have twist shifters and they do take more rotation, but the effort isn't all that much.



Quote Originally Posted by schmenke View Post
Do you know what size sproket your friend had? Mine is a 34T and I rarely use it when in the front granny-gear (i.e. 1st gear), even on the steepest of climbs. I find, as you said, the rear tire just brakes traction and I lose all forward momentum. I'll generally stay in 2nd or 3d gear and try to power up the hill, with my lungs ready to burst
He was just someone I ran into on the trail, and really have no idea how many teeth the sprocket was. It seemed very large to me, but it's possible he had smaller high gears making it seem that way. I know it was substantially lower than my gearing. Similar to you I was using 2nd or 3rd most of the time and loosing traction as I powered the crank down while out of the saddle. He was spinning a high cadence in the low gear and staying the the saddle, so I think the weight transfer and consistent power allowed him to climb stuff that I would break loose on.

When we stopped I took a better look at his back tire, and I think mine really had better knobbies for the conditions. Maybe there was more of a trick to it, but he was making it look easy.