Ten points here?

Question

hey just thinking i live in nc and there are some mountains where i am but i notice that most not all road bikes only have a two rings crank in the frount why mtb have three in the frount would it not be easyer to have three on a road bike in the mountains

Answer 1

You can get road bikes with 3 chainrings. They don't seem as popular, but there is a market for them.

Answer 2

MTBs have three rings because an mtb rider needs a greater range of gearing to deal with widely varying slopes and conditions.  Roadies have a much smoother road (no pun intended).

You will find many touring bikes with triple cranks.  Roadies sometimes eschew a triple because of style, but with the advent of what's called a compact crank (nothing to do with crank arm length; it's rather the length of the five little arms that radiate from the crank end to the chainrings, which is called a spider).  A compact crank often has a 50/34 combination rather than the 53/39 that has been the tradition since Eddy Merckx was king (or before).  A 50/34 combined with an 12-27 rear cassette will give you very close to all of the range of a triple chainring.

I did have a triple crank of 50/44/24, and I could climb about anything that I could keep traction on. :-)  But it's not considered a "fast" setup.

Maybe too much information, but there you go.

Answer 3

Yes, you can find three crank rings. Look at the Giant OCR 3 or the Forge CTS 1000.

Answer 4

Triples on a roadbike is somewhat of a stigma in 'Roadie World'!

I do ride a lot of hills and prefer a compact chainset because a triple can be fiddly to operate (although on some hills I encounter a 30/27 would be heaven!)

To summerize, it's Roadie snobbery that inhibits the use of triples. ( Even I plead guilty!)

Hope this helps.

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