Are you saying you want to shift during a ride? Or are you just asking for opinions about dinglespeed? You should be able to use the Surly hub, but you'll have to switch to an 8 speed chain. The KM has horizontal dropouts so you'll have to pull the wheel a little further back for the 18 to keep the chain tensioned, but you won't have to change the chainring. Proper chain tension will be more important since you will not have perfect chainline. I think there should be some threads with examples of dinglespeed, try searching for dinglespeed.

 

32/34 Front
19/17 Rear

 

What I'm trying to accomplish is cruising to a trail, switching the chain over to a different cog/chainring by loosening the rear bolts, retighten bolts, adjust brakes, and ride the trail on a climbing gear. To my knowldege I have the Surly ultra new hubs(2013 stock Karate Monkey). I know surly makes a dingle cog which correct me if I'm wrong are only for fixed gears. So in searching I came across the WI Dos Eno. That solves my problem, best of both worlds. I have seen a rare occasion a double double on the forums. I'd prefer a 1x2 but assume that it's not popular or possible because of the chain angle. So that said, I wanted to see what my setups my SS friends are running. Stopbreakindown gave me a pic of what I am looking for (any and all info on the personal application of the Dos Eno and or Double double). Specifically would you recomend a double double opposed to a 1x2. Info pertaining to a KM or surly products and how it worked and or words of wisdom etc wins extra good karma points. I talked to my LBS sounds like they have a grasp of what I'm asking for but the SS guru wasn't in today. Hopefully that made sense I tend to ramble.
Thanks guys!

 

If you want to avoid dealing with retensioning the wheel and adjusting the brakes, you could consider a double double set up. That is how WI designed it; if you run the 34/31 and a 18/20, you ride to the trail head on the 34/18 then ride the trails on the 31/20. For each tooth decrease on the rear, you add 2 teeth on the front. the Dos Eno is either 17/19 and 18/20. I don't know what the spacing is on the front two rings but you would just need to run a 4 tooth difference between two rings.

 

A "dinglespeed" is most advisable: no need to readjust brakes because the chain length remains the same, and you get straight chainline with either gear. So it's WI Dos in the rear and two chainrings in the front.

With a cassette rear hub it's easier: just buy two cogs of preferred size and put them on. I have my Moonlander setup like this: 33/21 for off-road use, 36/18 for commuting to and from trails.

If you only plan to change one gear and don't mind having the chainline off a bit, you could keep your current freewheel and buy another chainring to bolt on your spider. It'll be cheaper than the Dos freewheel - and your setup will be half-ready for the Dos freewheel if you get one after all.

 

A "dinglespeed" is most advisable: no need to readjust brakes because the chain length remains the same, and you get straight chainline with either gear. So it's WI Dos in the rear and two chainrings in the front.

With a cassette rear hub it's easier: just buy two cogs of preferred size and put them on. I have my Moonlander setup like this: 33/21 for off-road use, 36/18 for commuting to and from trails.

If you only plan to change one gear and don't mind having the chainline off a bit, you could keep your current freewheel and buy another chainring to bolt on your spider. It'll be cheaper than the Dos freewheel - and your setup will be half-ready for the Dos freewheel if you get one after all.

Agree with all that is said above. I run a dinglespeed on my road Single-speed 16/19 rear with a 45/48 front.

I would prefer to go with a wide-base CK cogs + cassette for MTB as White only has two DOS-ENO sizes and I think they dropped their 3-tooth gap. It appears they only have 16/18 and 17/19 nowdays. I have their older 16/19 set which I think gives a much better spread. Also with cassette, you have chain line flexibility up the wazoo which is nice.

That said, I have been running my DOS on my road bike for probably 5 years and its great. Chain length does stay the same as long as you keep your tooth count spread the same front and rear. If you run rim-brakes its just different enough that you have to adjust your brake pads to be perfect. You Don't want a 1x2. Adjusting your brake may not sound like work now, but its annoying in the end.

In use over the last 5 years, I will say my 16T has 99% of actual use and the 19T gets used when climbing hills....

Its a neat concept to keep a clean drive train with the no-tensioner look, but in practice, seriously,.... 99% of the time I am only in one gear. I spent $100's on different spreads of 135 BCD (I run campy on that bike) chainrings.... so I had 45,46,48,49,50,51t rings so I could have some flexibility if I needed to..... I just sold all my spare rings except my 48T.... Perhaps I am lazy, but once the novelty of the dinglespeed wears off, I basically ended up just buying a geared bike when I need gears. (I have 1 geared and 1 single speed for both road and MTB bikes)

On my SS Rigid MTB, I look like a moron spinning on the road to the trail,.... but like being able to hop onto the trail and not fiddle with my bike just to get me "trail ready"

I can post pics of the Dinglespeed if that helps you and clears anything up... I still use the bike quite a bit, but between 5 bikes, "quite a bit" is all relative.

 

Good post from Hiroshima, gave me some thoughts.

My 29er gearing is 34/20 and I use it pretty much everywhere from climbs to flats. It's a bike I take out to ride, not a commuter, so I don't really need another gearing for it. But still...

When I head out to a trail any further from home than 10 kilometers (about 6 miles or so), the spinning becomes frustrating. I don't have a car and much rather ride a bike anyways. If I ever put another chainring and cog to the side, I'll still probably ride 34/20 99% of the time, but I don't think stopping for half a minute at the trailhead is as bad as being frustrated on the way there.

If I find stopping to move the chain over too much of a hassle, I'll just ditch the extra parts and go back to spinning in the off-road gear.

I have a couple of geared bikes as well and I certainly don't diss gears, but I think a double singlespeed better retains the things I appreciate in a SS bike: the lightness and simplicity of riding and maintaining the bike.

 

The set-up I use works great, the 34/17 I use for cruising around the neighborhood or up to the trailhead (2-3 miles for me). Drop the wheel, move chain over to 32/19 which I use for the trails. I have a 15mm stubby box wrench I cary in a seat bag with the spare.

 

I have been experimenting for some time with dinglespeed on the cheap by re-using old suntour "perfect" 5-speed freewheels instead of the a white 2-speed or a cassette hub. These old high quality Japanese freewheels are heavy but they have strong prawls and wide cogs without shift ramps that work well for SS. Best of all, I already had them in my old parts hoard so cost nothing to play with. The entire 5-speed freewheel is only about 26mm wide so fits into a more compact area than a cassette, allowing for more outboard placement of the the drive side hub flange & better spoke dish geometry. The minimal axle overhang needed for this narrow of a FW is not nearly as prone to bending compared to a 7-speed freewheel which always had poor axle reliability. The cogs all thread onto the body so starting with several freewheels to harvest cogs and spacers, it is fairly easy to build custom 2 or 3 speed freewheels with just about whatever cog combo you want.

First example is an old 120mm OLD track bike I have. I got really tired of riding it on anything hilly with a fixed gear and even a ratchet singlespeed drivetrain was fairly limiting. The dropout spacing of this frame is too narrow for even a 7-speed cassette so narrow width freewheel was a better option for converting. I rebuilt it as a 3-speed, using a 110mm bcd crank that I configured with 30t, 34t and 38t chainrings, paired with a custom 3-speed suntour freewheel in the rear that has 14,18 & 22t cogs.

Using a surley singlespeed disk hub, it is possible to build a 2 or 3 speed rear wheel that is around 140mm wide. This wheel is still awaiting a custom built frame to go with it.

This Raleigh was a bike co-op rescue that I re-built as a 2-speed for about $20 total bike budget, makes for a fun bike to dink around on. It is difficult to get good cog ratios using the typical 22t inner granny gear that most 104mm BCD cranks come stock with. I have not yet bothered to order a bigger inner chainring gear that I would need to run this bike as a 3-speed, thus it is just a 2-speed for now using middle 32t and outer 36t chainrings along with a 2-speed 18/22 freewheel.

All my SS bikes now have horizontal dropouts, it is definitely a hassle to loosen wheel, move chain, reposition and clamp wheel in order to change the gear. One of my future plans it to try to devise a chain tensioner that can work over width of all three chainlines without needing side to side adjustment. This should allow for much faster gear changes without needing to loosen the hub. Wide tensioner would also be a great 2/3 speed approach for a vertical dropout frame.

 

Nice info I looked into a double double but they are more than I wanted to spend but love the idea and look. I like the budget builds