+1horizon wrote:Mick F wrote:
My point before, is that it's not the fact that (some) bikes are overgeared, but they don't have low gears as well. ie they don't have enough range of gearing.
I think bikes do have enough gears (nowadays) if they are spread out well and not too high. The three parameters for me are:
Slow enough to fall over (that's about 17inch or 22T Front/34T Rear
Fast enough to feel unsafe (that's easily achievable in free wheel on any steep downhill)
Close enough always to find a comfortable gear.
I think 21 speed just about did it for me based on those three parameters. 24 speed is ideal and 27 speed is luxury. Anything above is IMV a waste of simplicity and money. But this is because I am willing to forego (I was going to say sacrifice but it is no sacrifice) the high gears. This means that I obviously spin out on long downhills - on short steep downhills I am freewheeling. Maybe it's just me but I so rarely find those long, safe, shallow downhills.
For most people, the issue with cycling is how to get up hills: how many times have you heard someone say, "I gave up cycling because I was spinning out on the flat." I accept that my kind of cycling isn't to everyone's taste (too slow) but then I ask myself, if roadbikers want more gears (i.e. higher ones) why do they restrict themselves to a double chainset? It simply doesn't make sense to me.
As a test and before I read this post I tried on a ride not using the large ring on a triple, but just mainly the middle ring and the granny, although I probably didn't need the granny on that day. All hills are relative to the rider, but there were some as far as I was concerned. The teeth were 48, 38, 28 on the front and 11 to 32 on the back. The middle ring gives a gear ratio from 93 to 32 and the granny takes it to 24. That's a very wide spread of gear ratios. Why do I need a 48 tooth chainwheel? Two rings would be fine. Certainly as I get older, climbing hills is harder - it's not my legs that give up, its getting enough oxygen to them!
