Alex321
Guru
- Location
- South Wales
The Boardman Hybrid I had until I bought the Cube in August had a 3x, with quite similar ratios (though 11-32 rather than 11-34), SRAM gears and tektro brakes. I got a lot of good use out of that bike, with the main problem I had being that it ate bottom brackets. But I had no issues at all with the mix of SRAM gears and Tektro brakes - on a hybrid, the brake levers and gear shifters aren't combined the way they are on a road bike, so mixing brands isn't really an issue.Could you speak about the Derailleur, Shifters, Crankset, Brakes, etc? I did notice on the one I just posted everything is Shimano and the 1x is mixed. I'm unsure how the quality of these components compare to each other. My gut is saying the 3x is just going to introduce problems. I know the cross-chain thing (whatever it's called) but another derailleur as well. Kinda stuck.
I never had any real problems with the 3x once I had it set up properly - I did have some initial difficult getting the front derailleur set up right. And I wouldn't worry too much about cross-chaining. It doesn't really harm the drivetrain much, and with a 3x you are loess likely to want to do it anyhow, as there tends to be more overlap between the bottom gears on one chainring and the top gears on the next smaller one.
I think the Altus and the X4 are fairly similar level components (and both are 8 speed cassettes, which tends to reinforce that). And I don't think you will notice the difference between the Shimano Altus and Tektro brakes either.