New Chainring or chainset?

[scottfree]

Hi there,
can anyone recommend what I should do here? I currently have a road bike equipped with an old SR 52-42 teeth double chainset. I want to change the inner chainring to a lower teeth number to cope with the hills I will be doing in this years Etape! I was thinking around 38 or 39 but I fear I should be going lower. I cannot locate any suitable chainrings to fit though. I measured the bolt to bolt distance and it was about 85mm on my chainset.(BCD of 144mm?)

The alternative is to get another chainset such as the Stronglight Impact with 36T inner ring. However this only comes with a 48 tooth outer ring which is no good for flats and downhill. Can this Stronglight chainset accommodate a 50 or 52 teeth ring?

Any help would be appreciated as I have little time now to sort it out.

Thanks

Paul

 

[martin_j001]

There are many "compact" cranksets out there now that can accomplish what you want--most offer a 34/50 T chainrings (at least the ones from FSA). Changing your crankset out is probably the easiest, as I think a 39T chainring is too small for a BCD of 144 (although I'm not positive on this). Changing the crankset will also most likely require you to change out your bottom bracket.

 

[gclark8]

Check out Harris Cyclery, they have all sorts of chainrings and cranks: http://harriscyclery.net