About one hundred metres from my front gate and I hear a distinctly different sound coming from my drivetrain. I thought to myself, maybe it's just the new cog and chainring. But wait, no, why should it sound different? It's the freewheel that makes all the clicking noises when I coast. So I stop at the roadside, just past some VIP-looking folk, waiting for what seemed to be the Mayor of QC. A ribbon was tied across Sulu Street. Imagine that, they were inaugurating the paving of a 30-metre stretch of a residential street! Dunno, maybe some big shot resides on Sulu (either a politician or a drug-lord or both).
Back to my bike. Apparently, after several times of pulling my wheel out and back into my dropouts during my SS kit installation (adjusting the chain line), during that last adjustment, I had missed slotting the disc brake rotor into the brake caliper properly. The rotor had caught the retaining clip of the disc pad and that was scraping my rotor and making the funny sound.
Anyhoo, SS Ruth (I actually prefer saying "single gear" or "one gear" as "single speed" only applies if you're pedaling at A CONSTANT RPM in one chainring-cog combo; but I digress...) was taken out today for her first major trip: my bike commute to work. How did she fare? Here are my thoughts...
I was a bit apprehensive sticking with the 32:16 chainring:cog combo, but the SS conversion kit I got (FireEye SSK Cage) only had 14- and 16-tooth cogs included. That was one of the caveats of getting this particular kit, but having the several small spacers (versus only 2 or 3 of other kits) of the FireEye was more important to me than the cog size. Separate, individual cogs are easier to find in shops than individual spacers. The 32:18 combo I tried previously (no shifting on my 9x3 drivetrain) felt pretty good, at least on the slight uphills. But that proved too low a ratio for the downslopes and flat straightaways. So bumping up the gearing to 32:16 seemed OK.
Pedaling seemed a little hard at first, and I was concerned I wouldn't be able to accelerate fast enough from a standing start at traffic lights. But as I went along, the apparent extra effort seemed to dissipate and I was pedaling quite easily. Yes, 2:1 is pretty low for on-road cycling, and I admit I'm a wuss. In one forum, several cyclists said they run 40+:16+ ratios on their SS commuters! But I'd rather start out low and save my knees and work my way up to higher ratios later on.
What I found disappointing though were the Ergon knock-offs that felt quite good while sitting on the bike at home. It could've been just a set-up issue -- I may need to try several different rotated positions to get the angle just right -- but after a while, I started developing a blister on my palm, just below my right ring finger. Maybe it's just an anatomical anomaly since I get a blister on the exact same spot when I forget my gloves and use the rowing machine at the gym. In any case it was a sign that the grips weren't set up right. I'll need to rotate them a bit later to see how they feel on the way home. They do say these "ergonomic" grips take a little more effort to set up than regular round grips, but pay off with increased comfort in the end. I hope the "budget" nature of these knock-offs haven't resulted in the comfort being knocked off the performance of the grips. We'll see.
All in all, it was a good ride in. I didn't feel particularly more tired afterward than previous, multi-geared commutes, so I just might keep this gear combo (and searching shops for non-existent bike components [locally anyways] is actually getting tiresome). I will pass by Cycle Options on my way home later though. I was told they just might have the Shimano chain-/bashguard I was looking for.*
*(while the SS conversion is practically complete, i.e., cassette, shifters and derailleurs have been removed, I have yet to remove the granny ring and replace the big ring with a bashguard. An ISIS crank puller is yet another frustratingly elusive piece of kit that I have yet to purchase).
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