Patrick, In the winter I find that narrowing my gear choices is a proactive winter conditions strategy. If the chain is on a cog, the slop is less able to pack in enough to for it to become problematic so I change gears as little as I can. I'm service-averse of my own bikes and choose parts accordingly to avoid a low ride time/service time ratio. My time in the business made me savor my riding and not particularly finding tonic in their service. I do my own service/maintenance and enjoy work well done, I just don't invite more than necessary with untested or off-label use of components, parts and pieces.
My winter riding situation s different than yours since I'm mostly on the roads, complicated by a slop of snow and salt/melters. Their strategy is to use melters as long as possible to avoid dropping the plow blades on the pavement. The wheel-flung slurry is amicable to freezing onto surfaces, metal especially. Fenders, fork legs, chainstays, rear derailleur and cogs all targets. Over a decade of this I've balanced my approach to permit the most trouble free operation despite the conditions. Not that I'll be 30 miles from home, but that I'll be late to work and potentially cascading repercussions. "When (you) absolutely, positively have to get there..." My only big accommodation was getting a frame with disc brakes. The salted slop of winter roads made this much more distinct improvement than many other circumstances of which I've read reports. Away from the melters, it is not as pronounced and I do come to consider doing away with them and going back to a daily rider using rim brakes. Then is snows and the city salt trucks got going. Andy Cheatham Pittsburgh On Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 9:04:57 PM UTC-5, Deacon Patrick wrote: > > Executive Summery Conclusion: Drum brakes and IGH (except Rollof and > possibly a 7sp. Torpedo) are not designed for rough riding and folks who > are riding IGH and/or drum brakes off pavement are always fiddling with > their bikes and it is almost never a long term, reliable solution, but > instead one that is always breaking and needing fixing — the fiddler’s > dream! Thus, neither is the solution I seek and instead of a > Tranformapillar, I will focus on the Contentapillar. Grin. > > The Journey > The last two days I’ve been riding the Hunqapillar in wannabe 3-speed > mode. It’s been a fascinating experience — similar to the simplicity of > singlespeed, but with the ability to shift to a certain point without > stopping. A lot less thinking about gear shifts, so I may well incorporate > it into my routine, essentially skipping two gears each shift. > > I spoke with Grant, who was, as ever, very generious beyond all reasonable > expectations and even some unreasonable ones. He had some ideas on how to > lube the pivots in my derailure to possibly encourage shifting when frozen, > or at least making it easier for my hand to manually shift. > > All of this is the result of a very good thing — ongoing brain healing > that allows me to be stupider farther out in all conditions. Grin. Thus I > seek ways to maximize the liklihood of my gear not failing 30 miles from > home. Grin. > > Thank you all for your generosity in playing with this with me. Ride with > wild abandon! > > WIth abandon, > Patrick -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
