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| Shimano DX crankset, circa 1985. |
In the past few years, single chainring cranksets have become de rigueur in mountain buke circles and the pattern has been creeping into the gravel and road biking world as well. In some ways it makes sense; one less derailleur saves some weight and complexity. It does require an enormous rear cassette cog, (some are approaching 50 teeth!), and a specially designed rear mechanism to handle that large cog.
Of course, in light of these trends, I have moved in the opposite direction and have converted two of my bikes to triple cranks! I have been using compact, wide range doubles over the past several years. These have been fine, but when using this system, I tend to look at it as a 1X plus granny, which necessitates running the chain across all the rear cogs with the large ring, increasing "chain deflection" and possibly reducing chain life.
I got to thinking, why not add that middle ring and increase the number of gears available while reducing chain deflection? I have several old 110/74 BCD triple cranks laying around and all the necessary chainrings. So I constructed two triples and put them on my Mercian KOM and Ritchey Ascent. The result has been satisfying!
On the Mercian, I installed a venerable Shimano DX, a very nice quality triple from the '80s. i had the appropriate rear derailleur in the parts bin so I installed that as well, using my SunTour Barcons for shift levers.
For the Ritchey, I used a Shimano RSX triple, again from the part bin. I purchased new, (old) derailleurs for it. An RSX triple front and an STX GS rear. To shift these, I kept the Ultegra 8-speed bar end shifters.
