Woops. 26T it is.
Joe Bender-Zanoni Great Notch, NJ
Mark Bulgier wrote:
>
> Joe B-Z wrote:
>
>
>> I tend to use TA Cyclotourist rings with a tiny 24 or 22 ring.
>>
>
> The smallest ring made by TA for the Cyclotourist is 26 as far as I
> know. To go beyond that limit, I once made an adapter to use (steel)
> freewheel cogs as granny gears, with TA middle and outer rings - I used
> as low as 18 teeth. This was before the Mountain Tamer and other
> commercially-available versions were around. The adapter attached to
> the crank (to the, what is it? 49mm diameter bolt circle?) not to the
> other chainrings. Joe, do you use some sort of aftermarket adapter to
> get your low gears?
>
> I saw one big problem with it: very high chain tension due to the
> extreme leverage ratio. This caused fast wear on the rings (aggravated
> by their small size - just fewer teeth to share the wear) and fast wear
> on the chain. Also increased incidence of chain breakage, which of
> course should ideally be near zero. I broke a couple freewheels too -
> the "guts" (pawls shattered).
>
> Because of those problems I eventually took the adapter off and went
> back to stock chainring sizes, with suitably larger rear cogs.
>
> Mark Bulgier
> Seattle WA USA