The friendly folks of Wicked Racin showed up in a well-done booth to display their Dualrailleur chain guide. This product is a full fledged chain guide with a trick up its sleeve… it can shift to the granny ring. Remarkably, Mark from Wicked Racin was able to figure out how to make a chain guide that shifts between two front chainrings. This is very timely as downhillers now want lighter bikes, bikes with extended seatposts, and perhaps even a granny ring. When the shuttle is not available, it would be nice to be able to pedal to the top of the mountain.

Does it work? Luckily, we’ve had an opportunity to use the Dualrailleur guide for the last three months. It works like a champ! We haven’t dropped a chain yet and it’s pretty darn quite on those rocky downhills. On the Santa Cruz Nomad, it shifts between the middle ring and the granny with no fuss.

Originally, I didn’t want a granny on my 33 lb Nomad. I can turn those cranks, I thought. But now that I have it, I’m using the granny ring almost daily! I’ll take on any hillclimb or wall without hesitation and I rarely need to walk my big bike these days. It really makes the bike a lot more versatile. Also, I’ve been able to put a bigger ring in the front since I know I have the 22-tooth granny close by.

So it’s a great product that I thought I didn’t need. And it looks cool.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 6th, 2007 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Daily Coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.