I am interested in having a touring bike with very, very low gearing for loaded touring on paved roads in hard mountains. I'd like to go with a touring-specific bike, for the drop bars, integrated shifters (STI), and geometry, but I need to put something like mountain gearing on it. Many touring specific bikes come with chainrings around 30/40/50. I'd like to have 22/32/44. I have two questions: (A) Can I just put a mountain bike crankset on a road-style bike, so long as I can lower the clamp on the front der., and use my STI? (B) Barring that, what is the smallest chainring set I can swap out on a road triple--will it depend on bolt diameter, etc.? Basically, I am looking for suggestions to get very, very low gearing on a road-style touring bike. Lastly, the Rohloff internal gear hub would easily put me in my desirable gear range, but it would put me very far out of my desireable bank account range, so I'm looking for other options.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for your time.