Since the summer I've been helping my next-door-neighbour-but-one put together a bike specifically for audax, and we gave a lot of thought to what gearing would be best for him.
Along the way I started to wonder whether my own choice of gearing (I've been using triples ever since I started back in 2010) was still optimal. I tried a 50/34 compact on a hire bike a few years ago and I knew it didn't suit me, but reading around the subject I came across the concept of "super compact". Most of them don't go low enough for me because they are stuck to 110mm BCD. There are exceptions like the Sugino OX601 & OX901 chainsets - but these are way outside of what current budget permits. For a while I flirted with the idea of an MTB double but somehow the notion of a 4-arm chainset on a road bike seems offensive. Vain?
moi?
Spa Cycles have their own 'ersatz' super-compact (
linky) but it's square taper, something I've moved away from in general, because HTII is significantly lighter.
However it got me thinking...why not copy Spa's example and and replace the outer of a second-hand HTII triple with a chainguard? Without an outer ring, the FD should certainly cope with a difference of 16 teeth, and with a slightly wider range on the cassette I could have very nearly the same range of gears I use most on the triple, but without the constant double-shifting which annoys me on a 50-34.
After experimenting I decided that, for me (and the usual YMMV applies) a 44-28 chainset would be just fine - which with a chainguard looks like
of course you don't really need a chainguard if the limit screws are adjusted correctly.
Here's the same combination ready to go on another bike, but using 3.5mm spacers under the heads of the chainring bolts because I was too cheap to go out and buy the short single ring bolts.