What gear range do you use.

[Cyril Haearn]

Is it OK to say I haven't a clue and probably don't care? (Should I revoke my forum membership?)

I don't have a clue what they're talking about, its all chinese to me.

It comes from the time of the old ordinary, if one had a 52" wheel and direct drive one travelled pi*52 inches per turn of the pedals

The gear is calculated from the ratio chainring teeth/sprocket teeth*wheel size
That is why cyclists learn the 27-times table
Maybe it is best to upgrade to a single fixed (59" gear), that is much simpler

[Rusty Rider]

Thank you both for showing me how to work it all out, I'll attempt to find out what mine is when I go for a ride on Friday, (on dog sitting duty until Thursday so lots of walking)

[mercalia]

Is it OK to say I haven't a clue and probably don't care? (Should I revoke my forum membership?)

I don't have a clue what they're talking about, its all chinese to me.

It comes from the time of the old ordinary, if one had a 52" wheel and direct drive one travelled pi*52 inches per turn of the pedals

The gear is calculated from the ratio chainring teeth/sprocket teeth*wheel size
That is why cyclists learn the 27-times table
Maybe it is best to upgrade to a single fixed (59" gear), that is much simpler

seems like gear inches dont include the pi, presumably as in those days didnt have a calculator maybe these days we should use a more meaningful method?

My Dawes 1-down is from 22.5 to 108

[Cyril Haearn]

I don't have a clue what they're talking about, its all chinese to me.

It comes from the time of the old ordinary, if one had a 52" wheel and direct drive one travelled pi*52 inches per turn of the pedals

The gear is calculated from the ratio chainring teeth/sprocket teeth*wheel size
That is why cyclists learn the 27-times table
Maybe it is best to upgrade to a single fixed (59" gear), that is much simpler

seems like gear inches dont include the pi, presumably as in those days didnt have a calculator maybe these days we should use a more meaningful method?

My Dawes 1-down is from 22.5 to 108

One speaks of a 52" gear, the distance travelled per pedal revolution is 163"

A 163" gear would be impractically high, except for Tigerbiten of this parish who uses 176" on his bent trike

[[XAP]Bob]

I don't have a clue what they're talking about, its all chinese to me.

It comes from the time of the old ordinary, if one had a 52" wheel and direct drive one travelled pi*52 inches per turn of the pedals

The gear is calculated from the ratio chainring teeth/sprocket teeth*wheel size
That is why cyclists learn the 27-times table
Maybe it is best to upgrade to a single fixed (59" gear), that is much simpler

seems like gear inches dont include the pi, presumably as in those days didnt have a calculator maybe these days we should use a more meaningful method?

My Dawes 1-down is from 22.5 to 108

The Pi is in there based on the current wheel size.

The other common method of describing gearing is in metres of development - that *does* include the pi.

[Cyril Haearn]

Or ratio, so 48x24 = 2
I think a lot of cyclists do not understand gears, one often reads "I use 53x16" and has to calculate oneself
So, hub gears are quite another fettle of kitsch, I really do not know what goes on mine

[PH]

seems like gear inches dont include the pi, presumably as in those days didnt have a calculator maybe these days we should use a more meaningful method?

I've always considered it a comparative tool, what the numbers are and what the represent has no meaning to me other than that.

[Tigerbiten]

It's around 15 mph when wind resistance , which goes up at the square of the speed, starts to hurt.
And a 70" gear spun at 70 rpm is very roughly 15 mph.
This is why fixed gear bikes tend to be around or just below 70".

It's also why I think where the range 60"-75" is important on a double.
So if bib-big is close to 60" and small-small is close to 75" then you could end up riding around with a lot on opposite sides of the chainrings-cassette.

[Tigerbiten]

A 163" gear would be impractically high, except for Tigerbiten of this parish who uses 176" on his bent trike

176" is impractly high as I need to be going +40 mph to even use it and there's not alot of hills that are around +10% down and long enough to really make use of it.
But when you can then .....

[Debs]

Is it OK to say I haven't a clue and probably don't care? (Should I revoke my forum membership?)

I don't have a clue what they're talking about, its all chinese to me.

I think it's just blokes liking to compare how many inches they have....

Although the topic title does ask 'what gear range do you use' this could imply the lowest and highest gear or it could imply the range in-between too, which is far more interesting and where one spends most time doing the spinning. I would think most people rarely [or never] use the highest gear, maybe the lowest gets used more often if you need to hump up a stonker of a steep hill everyday, but this becomes dependent upon so many factors, the lie of the land, age, strength, and state of fitness of the rider, the type of bike used, so lowest and highest inches used are probably a little much of muchness to most peoples here.

Personally, although i can get by with my fashionable flavour of our time 'compact 34/50 chainset' and 11 speed cassette, i would by far prefer to have a triple chainset and 9 speed.
As i've admitted earlier in this thread, the 11 and 12 tooth cogs on my cassette never get used [ however the 11 tooth cog does hold the chain when i drop the wheel out]. But in practise i'm only using the 11 speed as a 9 speed anyway, with the disadvantage of needing to buy a replacement 11 speed chain for £30 when i could be buying a 9 speed chain for £10 each time they wear out
Triple chainsets are cool IMO, they very easily provide the ultimate range of gears, with little in the way of compromising, so why did they go out of fashion?

[Cyril Haearn]

What is compact? What is fashion?

Maybe one should have a range of gears such that one never needs to use top and bottom

Can't imagine pedalling anything higher than 81", so 88" top is plenty for me

[Tigerbiten]

With my bent trike-trailer rig my 'standard' flatland gears are the top of my Rohloff first time around.
That's only around 50" or 13 mph so not fast.
If I ditch the trailer then I'll gain another couple of mph and I up my flatland gear to around 60".

The whole reason behind my drive setup is to maximize the gear range while keeping it fairly simple due to the fact that I only have one hand after an accident with a Tiger.
I knew a simple triple wasn't going to give me the range I wanted. My first bent trike was setup like that
A dual drive triple would have just given me the range at the expense of another hand control. So not on.
Now a Rohloff and a wide triple would again have given me almost the range I wanted. So was thinking going that route.
But then I found out about Schlumpf drives. Change gear by using your heel. One less hand control so ideal for me.
So I've ended up after all the tweaks with twin chainrings on a Schlumpf HSD and a Rohloff.
The sub 10" first gear was planned right from the start.
The plus 130" top gear is just a side effect of the range as I was only aiming for around 120".
But now I'm used to the range and how it works out on the road, I wouldn't want to revert back to something with a smaller range.

[Samuel D]

So I've ended up after all the tweaks with twin chainrings on a Schlumpf HSD and a Rohloff.

Does the power-transfer efficiency of this combination ever bother you?

[reohn2]

What is compact? What is fashion?

Maybe one should have a range of gears such that one never needs to use top and bottom

Can't imagine pedalling anything higher than 81", so 88" top is plenty for me

Compact = less gears,with to high a lowest gear,and silly highest gears that can't be used

Fashion is a master that can't be satisfied

When fit(I'm not presently)89in is the highest gear that makes any sense to me and has been that way for a number of years.
Lowest gear for me is 20in so I can climb almost anything but mostly is only used when I'm tired,bonked or both,climbing out of the saddle is taboo for more than 50m or so and as I'm a spinner small gears suit me fine.
90+inches are useless to me and anything higher than 20in bottom gear makes me feel vulnerable in anything like hilly terrain.

Another important thing for me is ratio progression in the most used/cruising gears especially in the 14 to 20 mph range where I like to have a 2 tooth gap in ratios,nice progression where I don't need to spin a ridiculously high cadence to have a manageable cadence when I change up and don't think the chain's come off when I change down .

[Tigerbiten]

So I've ended up after all the tweaks with twin chainrings on a Schlumpf HSD and a Rohloff.

Does the power-transfer efficiency of this combination ever bother you?

The power-transfer efficiency is why I run twin chainrings.

I started with a single chainring and two different size sprockets.
The larger sprocket was used on tour due to it giving me a sub 10". But the shift into overdrive was around 14 mph which I could hit on the flat.
The smaller sprocket which I used around home gave me around a 20 mph overdrive shift. But I not only lost the sub 10" which was the whole idea of the build but was also a pita to swop cogs.
The best option would be a twin sprocket on the back due to slicker shifts. But that's a tricky engineering problem on a Rohloff.
So I've gone for 54/38 twin chainring instead, which gives an almost exact 3 gear difference.

There's no loss in efficiency with the HSD in direct drive mode, only in overdrive mode.
As the overdrive shift is now around 20 mph, I need to be going downhill to make use of it.
It's probably at its worst at around 3% down and around 25 mph.
Above that the aerodynamics of the recumbent kick in.
So the loss of efficiency when running downhill at speed don't really matter.