So the mountain bike season is coming to a close here as people are trading in their mountain bike for cross bikes and gearing up for winter, such as myself.  However, I was thinking today as I looked over the trusty Superfly how pleased I was with the bike this year.  Many of you also have the opportunity to ride the same bike, so there is no need to make you aware of its downright awesome-ness, as you already know.  I did want to offer my thoughts on the whole single ring thing becoming more and more common today, especially with the 29-inch crowd.

For my setup, as you can see from the photos, I chose MRP’s 1.X chainguide, and paired it with a Spot 34tooth ring.  The conversion was easy and it became surprisingly gratifying to peel off the grams normally reserved for a front derailleur, shifter, and 3 chainrings.  To make it even easier MRP includes single ring chainring bolts so there is no need to fuss with spacers.

Once mounted on the bike and after some minor adjustments to prevent chain rubbing, I got to test out the setup.  Although I was skeptical at first about the 34tooth ring not being big enough for some wide open sections, my worries were quickly put to rest as the 34-11tooth cassette seemed to have the right gear for just about any terrain.  What’s funny is that fellow Crew’er Michael Patrick told me back in the spring that a big ring was just excess weight on a 29er, but it took me almost the whole season to completely realize this.

Bottom Line:  In my opinion, single is the way to go on your Superfly, as it makes it feel even more ‘Fly’.   You can run a shorter chain, save weight, have better mud clearance and improved shifting.  However, there are certainly a lot of options out there to play with and everyone has their own thing that works, but that’s half the fun…

Thanks for reading and happy riding-

Brad

Gear Reviews, Observations
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