All those gears on bicycles

[Uber_the_Goober]

@Gary_T

That’s a wonderfully macho position to take. Unfortunately, it’s also an effective way to overstress knees. It’s really not wise to push them hard.

Meh, I wasn’t going for the macho position. I was just trying to be smugly superior with my almost fail-safe single gear bike

Am I the only rider who stands up off my seat when the going gets tough? This helps me so much that I actually have my seat down as low as it will go - similar to a BMX bike - and when approaching a hill I just stand up and crank them pedals with the added benefit of my body weight pushing down and my legs nice and straight.

I notice that the trend in bike manufacturing and the current opinions on how a person should ride tend to disagree with the way I’ve been riding for my entire life. Although if I’m on a bike like a road bike where I’ll never be encountering any type of bumps or tree roots or anything that requires lifting off the seat I would have the seat adjusted according to the conventional wisdom. But for any kind of trail riding - that seat’s down as far as she can go and I’m up.

[dropzone]

Got an email in which a friend said she wanted to talk to me about chairing, with “a meeting” left off. I first wondered how she knew I had just finished replacing the chainrings on my bike.

My brother is going to send me a Brooks B68 saddle he has lying around. Great. Now I’ll have a saddle that is worth more than the rest of the bike.

[Richard_Pearse]

@Uber_the_Goober

Am I the only rider who stands up off my seat when the going gets tough? This helps me so much that I actually have my seat down as low as it will go - similar to a BMX bike - and when approaching a hill I just stand up and crank them pedals with the added benefit of my body weight pushing down and my legs nice and straight.

Standing and mashing a hard gear isn’t as efficient as sitting and spinning a lower gear and if you’re riding 100 miles you don’t want to be wasting energy mashing a hard gear unless you have to. I tend to mix it up because standing uses muscles in a different way and when I’m climbing a hill I’ll stand for a bit just to get my legs and body in a different position (and I like the arm workout you get from it) but for a long sustained climb I’ll be sitting for most of it. On a steep climb I sometimes have no option but to stand, it’s not ideal though.

I’ve been on rides where there have been a few guys with single speeds, they are in general very fit but they’re not getting the best mechanical advantage possible from a bike, and they’ll be slow going down the hills and slow going up them. The only place where they can hold their own is on the flat where, presumably, they’ve got the right gear ratio. Even then they won’t be able to take full advantage of a tailwind and they will be slower going into a headwind.

It really depends on what you want out of your riding. If all you want is fitness then it doesn’t matter what bike you have. If the bike is crap you’ll get more of a workout riding a shorter distance. Personally I like to go for long rides, take in the scenery, and be at a competitive pace with my peers, so I want a bike that will let me go as fast as I can but that isn’t insanely expensive (I consider anything toward $10,000 to be insanely expensive and my own bike isn’t anywhere near that kind of price.)

[Kevbo]

I have a number of bikes, ranging from one speed (sort of, I’ll esplain below) to 27 speeds. They all have their place.

It is a case of of horses for courses. The single speed is actually a fixed gear with a “dingle” double cog on the back and double chain-ring on the front. So It is actually a two speed, but I have to stop, loosen the rear wheel, manually move the chain over, and retension the chain to shift gears. This means it stays in the high gear unless the situation really demands the low gear to climb a long, steep hill, or deal with a strong headwind. It is also a flip-flop, but I think I have used the freewheel maybe twice in over a year.

The above bike is good for reasonably level routes, in good weather, with no need to carry stuff besides me and maybe what I can fit in a knapsack. A car analogy would be an open, two seat sports car. Adding fenders and racks and otherwise Freding it out would also add weight and make it far less able to climb hills without the option of downshifting. It is pretty fast and fun for the situations where it works.

My main commuter is a 14 speed internally geared beast. It is an excellent transportation bike with wide stout tires that laugh at potholes and goatheads. It has racks front and rear, and I frequently stop and buy groceries on the way home from work. Sometimes I even stop at costco on this machine. It has fenders and will soon have a chaincase so that it can be ridden in the rare rain without maintainance problems. It has dynamo powered lights so that I needn’t worry about getting home before dark. It has a holder for my coffee cup. All this Fredness adds weight, it weighs more than double what the fixie does. and the gears are very useful for hauling that weight up the hills. I put a little over 2000 miles a year on this bike. This is the Subaru hatchback of bikes.

If I need to haul a LOT of chit, then there is the longtailMundo. That has 21 theoretical speeds, though I don’t think I have ever used the granny ring, as the tallest gear is only like 80 inches or so. The granny ring is there if I ever need to haul a lead brick collection up a 10% grade I guess. I do end up shifting a lot, as the gears are handy to get the mass moving even on the level, and brisk acceleration from a stop is needed to get enough speed to make balancing easy with a load. This would be the pickup truck of bikes.

The Tandem has 27 widely spaced gears. (24/34 to 52/11 on 700C wheels) We use every one of those gears over the course of a year, and at least all the front rings on most rides. In this case I chose the ratios so that where the ranges of the front rings overlap, the ratios are interleaved…by dropping to the next larger or smaller chainring I can half-step the ratios when I am anywhere near the middle of the range. This is very useful as the stoker does not ride nearly as much as me. She is not able to spin as fast as I am, so there is a fairly narrow range where I need to keep our cadence in order to get much power at all. Climbing out of the saddle on a Tandem is a skill my stoker and I have yet to master so we rely on the granny ring , and the big meat is for when we flat out fly on the downgrades. This would be the four-door sedan of bikes.

I have a MTB and a roadburner with 21 and 27 speeds respectively. I use the full range on these, though not on every ride. Off-road the lower ranges on the MTB are needed. In the winter, I fit it with studded tires and use it for commuting on bad weather days, and then I use the big ring mostly. On the roadburner, the granny ring is handy to climb in the foothills in NE Albuquerque, and the big meat for descending same. The MTB would be the Jeep of bikes. Not sure what the right analogy for the roadburner would be…maybe a rally car?

There are downsides to too large numbers of gears. You carry the weight of all of them at all times even if you are only using one or a few. Extra sprockets on the rear shift most of the load to the drive-side spokes and make the rear wheel laterally weak due to low tension on the NDS, and poor bracing angles. If you increase the rear triangle spacing for less dish, then you have to widen the cranks so they clear the chainstays, and some folks claim that hurts pedaling efficiency and can cause joint stress. (google Q-factor) The same issue arises when you add front chainrings. Adding more cogs doesn’t add as many useful gears as it might due to cross-chaining. Running narrower chain to reduce Q-factor weakens the chain and increases wear. Wide range gear systems need lots of take-up range, so the rear derailleur becomes bulkier, heavier, and more prone to damage.

On an internal gear hub, adding gears adds weight, complexity, and expense. It may reduce reliability and efficiency as well. There is only so much room available, so compromising will be required. The Rohloff does a good job of achieving all the goals except keeping the price down!

Due to the limitations of the power plant, bicycles have always been an exercise in compromise, and this takes place in a multidimensional space: efficiency vs. weight vs. comfort vs. cost vs. durability vs. strength vs. high maintainance vs. what people want.

As far as how many gears do you really need? The Rohloff 14 speed hub pretty well nails it. Plenty of range, (low enough to spin the back tire on a steep grade, high enough to descend at over 30 mph) and close enough spaced that you seldom wish you could split them. It is heavy and expensive and needs a wide chainline though.

[Quercus]

@The_Lovely_Margo_Lane

Am I the only one who feels it in the knees if I take hills in high gear? Once is no problem, but after the second or third day in a row of powering up a grade without downshifting (usually because I’m late to work) I feel like my kneecaps are going to fall off!

You are certainly not the only one. The usual recommended cure is to not power up grades (or power away from a stop, etc.) without downshifting. And once you’ve got that down, don’t upshift until you’re forced to because you can’t pedal any faster. Riding efficiently (and in a knee-friendly way) is really counter-instinctive, but pedaling more quickly in an easier gear than is (at first) natural is the best thing to do when riding.

[guizot]

@Gary_T

That’s a wonderfully macho position to take. Unfortunately, it’s also an effective way to overstress knees. It’s really not wise to push them hard.

It’s also contrary to the whole concept of using a bicycle at all, (except for coasting downhill).

[Busy_Scissors]

@Kevbo

I have a number of bikes, ranging from one speed (sort of, I’ll esplain below) to 27 speeds. They all have their place.

It is a case of of horses for courses. The single speed is actually a fixed gear with a “dingle” double cog on the back and double chain-ring on the front. So It is actually a two speed, but I have to stop, loosen the rear wheel, manually move the chain over, and retension the chain to shift gears. This means it stays in the high gear unless the situation really demands the low gear to climb a long, steep hill, or deal with a strong headwind. It is also a flip-flop, but I think I have used the freewheel maybe twice in over a year.

T.

On that dinglespeed Kevbo, can you get the double cog on a freewheel? Or is it something you would always ride fixed?
I know MTBers who have that set up but it’s usually on a conversion with a freehub. I have an on-one pompino I’d like to try it on which is track-spaced at the back, so I don’t know if there is enough room to fit a double cog (don’t know how big they are).

[Anaamika]

I miss my old one speed bike, too. Or even the three speed. When I bought my current bike, my SO, who used to race, insisted I get a really good one with multiple gears, etc. I rarely use even half of them. I just want to ride around town, with only a few shallow hills. I don’t care what the biks is doing, I just want it to work.

My next bike will be much, much simpler.

[Kevbo]

@Busy_Scissors

On that dinglespeed Kevbo, can you get the double cog on a freewheel? Or is it something you would always ride fixed?
I know MTBers who have that set up but it’s usually on a conversion with a freehub. I have an on-one pompino I’d like to try it on which is track-spaced at the back, so I don’t know if there is enough room to fit a double cog (don’t know how big they are).

I think you could run an old 5 speed freewheel with n<5 cogs on it. Sheldon Brown talks about doing something like that on one of his bikes. Or maybe he screwed/brazed/riveted an extra cog onto a single-speed freewheel…I forget. In my case I ride it as a fixed gear with a couple lower “bail-out” gears, one fixed, and one free. I work perhaps 150’ lower altitude than my house, about 5 miles away. When I built up the bike, I was thinking I would need the lower gear to get home, but that has only been the case when the wind is really honking.

I think there is room for at least three cogs if you use 9sp chain and spacing, even with 120mm dropout spacing. On 130mm road bikes you should be able to get one more, and on 135mm MTBs maybe even one beyond that.

[Kevbo]

@Anaamika

I miss my old one speed bike, too. Or even the three speed. When I bought my current bike, my SO, who used to race, insisted I get a really good one with multiple gears, etc.

<my bolding>

This shows one of the flaws in the US bike market. It is about selling racing bikes to people who don’t race and Mountain bikes to people who rarely take them off the pavement. People who want a bike for everyday transportation are underserved.

Decent transportation/utility bikes DO exist, but too few shops stock them or know them well enough to realize that this is what their customers really need.

Here is alist of some of the choices for good transportation bikes. It is two years old so some of the links are broken, and the prices have increased a bit as well, but it is a good start.

[Anaamika]

@Kevbo

<my bolding>

This shows one of the flaws in the US bike market. It is about selling racing bikes to people who don’t race and Mountain bikes to people who rarely take them off the pavement. People who want a bike for everyday transportation are underserved.

Decent transportation/utility bikes DO exist, but too few shops stock them or know them well enough to realize that this is what their customers really need.

Here is alist of some of the choices for good transportation bikes. It is two years old so some of the links are broken, and the prices have increased a bit as well, but it is a good start.

Well, it’s also because I gave in to my SO, thinking he knew better. And he does know a great deal more about bikes…but he way overdid it. He wanted to get me a great bike. It’s a great bike. It’s just not suited to me, at all.

Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.

[Uber_the_Goober]

@guizot

It’s also contrary to the whole concept of using a bicycle at all, (except for coasting downhill).

Absolute and utter nonsense.

My single speed bike is not contrary to the concept of using a bicycle. Nor is pedaling harder when the situation demands it. It does however force one to adjust their expectations for what the trip will be like. It requires more rider effort to go up hills, yes. It doesn’t travel as quickly on flat ground. It accelerates like lightning, but tops out nearly as fast.

None of these things are contrary to “the concept of using a bicycle”. The concept of using a bicycle is simple - if you remember the old timey pictures of the first bicycles where it was a giant front wheel and a pedal attached directly to it - it is to move a person along at a pace faster than walking while being able to traverse terrain that you might not want to walk on like puddles or somesuch.

For me, the “concept” of using a bicycle is simply that I enjoy riding my bike over difficult terrain, up bumpy trail hills, and down the same.

My bike is quite in line with that concept. The single speed means less maintenance, lower chance for mechanical failure, lower weight, and never a missed gear while accidentally shifting during the uphill push. And when I want to use it for on road transportation, which is presumably what you have in mind for “the concept of using a bicycle”, it works just fine, albeit a little slower than the geared beasts.

[dropzone]

I loved my last one-speed until I killed it climbing an overpass. Not a fixie, but a plain old Schwinn Racer “lightweight” with a coaster brake. I was standing up to make the last few feet but between my weight and my muscle power (okay, mostly weight) I pretty much tore apart the whole back of my bike, hub, frame, and everything. I would get another except that would put me back at three bikes.