What the heck? More snow.

I thought we were done with snow here for a while, but we got it again on Saturday. This did give me a chance to mess around with chainrings on my new Goldrush.

I ordered my bike with the 24T small chainring giving a 19" low gear. It is nice having the ultra low "bailout" gears, but you sure give up some shifting performance. I actually had more trouble going up to the 42T than down to the 24T, except the jump down to the 24T is so extreme that you have to grab a handful of rear gears to keep from having such a big jump that you're just spinning air.

I'd intended from the beginning to upgrade to oval Q rings from Rotor, but they don't have a small granny for my crank (30T is their smallest). I did have an old Sugino Cycloid 28T in my parts bin, so thought I'd give it a go. I think this was probably a copy of the original series Biopace. The ovalizing is more extreme than the Q rings. The original Biopace and it's copies used a progressively more oval shape for the smaller rings than for the larger. The Q rings keep about the same differential across all the sizes (percentage, not tooth size difference).

I took the new setup out for a trial on our neighborhood hills yesterday. I like the oval ring. A lot. It seems very smooth, and yet powerful. Not jerky, but you get that extra resistance right where you've got the leverage to take advantage of it. Even with the extreme oval to round shift, it is much smoother shifting than the more extreme 24T to 42T I ordered on the bike. And the transition is also much nicer (not nearly such a big jump). The only downside is not having as low a granny. I got up every hill I tried, though Southpointe Circle was tough (I think it approaches 25 percent near the top).

I was anxious to check the gearing out on a real road ride, so headed up Kingwood Pike ahead of the rain today. The sun was out when I started. There was still plenty of snow on the ground once I gained some elevation out of town. I'd hoped to do the long version of this ride, but the rain caught me right at the turnoff for the shorter 20 loop, so I headed down at that point. Rain snow and sun all in one nice ride.The gearing was great. I used the low, but didn't need anything lower, and surprised myself going up Sawmill Hill (see Kingwood Pike link above) clicked up one sprocket up on the cassette.

The transition to the round 42T was a non-issue. I liked the oval ring and found myself dropping to the granny sooner just to use it, but both felt fine. You'd expect one or the other to feel weird, but that was not the case.

It is difficult to compare directly to round rings since the gear ratio varies through the stroke. The 28T front (oval)/28T rear (on click up) is numerically the same as the 24T round ring shifted up one more sprocket to the 24T in the rear. Both are 1:1, so give about a 27" gear, but the oval ring feels firmer. I'm trying not to say harder, because that's not exactly it. Remember that the 28T oval ring probably ends up like a 32 or so on the power stroke, and maybe like the 24 over the dead spot. It feels like I'm able to push a harder gear with the oval ring.

I guess the real comparison would be to check cadence since the oval ring is still 28T overall (or compare speed, or time), but I probably won't. This is what I've got, and I like it. I plan to order a 40T middle Q ring, but was so happy with the setup on todays ride that I'm not sure I'll bother.