New Crankset for Expedition

I needed to do something to smooth out the shifting on the crankset and still be able to easily tow Betzi on her many rides. Replacing the 24t low gear with the a 26t (26t chainring installed) smoothed out the shifting a little bit but it was far from ideal. SO...I put on a mountain bike crankset.

I stopped guessing the weight of my Expedition and actually put a scale to it. With all the luxuries it tipped the scale at 60 plus pounds. Now add 30 pounds of trailer and 40 plus pounds of pooch I'm grinding 130 plus pounds. So I took a whole new approach to setting up the crankset...I put on a mountain bike crankset. I now have a 44/32/22 triple crankset which gives me a sweet low gear at 18 gear inches and high gear clocking in at a whopping 102 gear inches.  Now I spin out at about 27 mph. The old high gear was 115 gear inches and I would spin out at about 35mph. No loss...I'll use the 700 when I have a need for speed. I shouldn't be going that fast with Betzi hanging on in her trailer anyway. The gear inches are more in line with what you get when you buy a stock trike with a 20" wheel.

New crankset specs:
FSA V Drive MegaExo
781 grams
44/32/22
170mm cranks which all of my 6'1' is comfortable with and I feel gives me more power.
Q factor is 170mm which is typical for a MTB setup. My old crankset had a Q factor of 157mm. For those of us stuck in the old world it means that there is 1/2 inch more width between cranks.

I took a 17 mile ride today with the new setup and it was nice!! Smooth shifting and the low gear is a luxury up hills. The larger Q factor was barely noticed. Although a few more rides will tell if the larger width (all of 1/2 inch) between cranks has any impact on my aging infrastructure.