Samd said:
I had a customer send me some info recently of a dual chainring on his BBS powered recumbent.
He used one of my 104BCD chainring adapters and a dual chainring in conjunction with a fatbike (100mm) derailleur setup to shift it all outboard a bit. Seemed pretty happy and sent me a rundown as he felt it was a useful option for the adapters.
He now runs both 48T and 32T on his BBS setup. Torque and speed options.
Yep, that's my KMX trike.
Just to confirm Samd supplied the adapter. My mate bought a spider that came with a 3.2mm spacer disc from some in Australia. I bought the spacer from him and that allowed the double setup you see.
The dual setup has been running without a hitch as gives the BBS02 a new lease of life when hill climbing the really steep ones. The front 48T/38T now drives a nuVinci N360 CVP controlled by their Harmony Intelligent Electronic Shift System. The road speed at a cadence of 100rpm is 37.5mph on the 48T to 18T hub sprocket with the hub on full over-drive.
I very rarely use the 38T, only for uphill gradients greater than 15%. The system runs really well on the 48T for pretty much most riding and terrain conditions. I am consider upsizing both chain rings by 2 maybe 4 teeth (I cannot exceed a 10T difference between the two chain rings due to limitations in the chain tensioning system).
It will only work well on bikes where the distance between the crank and rear axle is 1 metre or greater. I.E. Longtails, cargo bikes, recumbent bikes/trikes.
It WILL NOT WORK on standard diamond frame style bikes due to the large amount of chain deflection outside of the normal chain line outer limit, for it to reach over to the chain rings.
I know. My mate who supplied me the spacer tried it as an experiment on his MTB. He couldn't fit a front derailleur because he did not have a fat bike adapter. He manually placed the chain on each chain ring in turn and did some test rides with it. He found that from the third largest to the largest rear sprocket when using the small front chain ring the, chain kept jumping off the sprockets. On the large chain ring he could only use the three smallest sprockets else the chain kept jumping off. His plan to double stopped there, hence my ownership of the spacer.
The double setup on the BBS01/02 will work well for those who have the right type bike to install it on.
N