More things that Luke likes
Last week I took my old 2002 KHS Flite 800 out. I have hung on to this bike because I like riding it so much. After all it was the starting point for the creation of Thundercles. (my custom Ti Santana Single Take-a-part)
The Flite 800 is made from Reynolds 853 and is a sweet ride. The unique thing though is the gearing. After a derailleur incident, where said rear derailleur was cursed at and then thrown in a river somewhere in Missouri..... I installed a borrowed XTR mountain derailleur which works great. I began to scheme and realize that I could put an 11-34 mountain cassette as well. That would give me some great bottom end for those mountain days. If I did that, couldn't I run some big chainrings as well? I ended up with a 42 and a 56! on the crankset. wow what a difference. My top gear is a 56-11 which equal 134 gear inches. In a nut shell, that means each revolution of my crankset would turn one revolution of a virtual 11 foot wheel. That's a lot of distance covered! It feels like the Six Million Dollar man chasing the bad guys.
Sure it's not perfect, The jumps between gears are huge and the chain rubs the big ring when you cross chain but hey, you shouldn't cross chain anyway.
So forget triple and compact cranks, I think this is a great setup for cross country riding. It's easy to swap out cassettes after those mountains.
Luke
The Flite 800 is made from Reynolds 853 and is a sweet ride. The unique thing though is the gearing. After a derailleur incident, where said rear derailleur was cursed at and then thrown in a river somewhere in Missouri..... I installed a borrowed XTR mountain derailleur which works great. I began to scheme and realize that I could put an 11-34 mountain cassette as well. That would give me some great bottom end for those mountain days. If I did that, couldn't I run some big chainrings as well? I ended up with a 42 and a 56! on the crankset. wow what a difference. My top gear is a 56-11 which equal 134 gear inches. In a nut shell, that means each revolution of my crankset would turn one revolution of a virtual 11 foot wheel. That's a lot of distance covered! It feels like the Six Million Dollar man chasing the bad guys.
Sure it's not perfect, The jumps between gears are huge and the chain rubs the big ring when you cross chain but hey, you shouldn't cross chain anyway.
So forget triple and compact cranks, I think this is a great setup for cross country riding. It's easy to swap out cassettes after those mountains.
Luke
Hey Luke you left out the part about the "sprint finish" where in I smoked your ass up your street and left you for dead...Luke are you still alive??
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