More Gears Stuff

I think I left the impression with yesterday's post that I really didn't get much out of my messing around experiment with bigger gears. Really, I think trying something different like this is pretty useful.

Now I know what it feels like to be in one gear higher than is really practical for me on a hill. If I get to that same feel with my lowest gear I'll know about what I need to do about it. I know that on the Sixth Street hill that kicked my butt a couple days ago it felt about as hard to push the pedals as it did trying to get up Jefferson Street in the middle ring did yesterday (I could probably do it but might hurt myself trying). So if I look at the percentages to the other gears I've used on Jefferson Street, then I can make a good guess that I could make it up Sixth Street okay with a 19.5" gear, but it would take a 17" gear to make it comfortable.

Of course there are a lot of variables, but now I've got pretty good idea of what I need. Happily, that agrees closely with what my intuition said. I'd been hoping to get my low to around 18.5 to 19.5. The problem of course is that to get the change I want I would need to go from my 32T rear cog to a 40T to get to about a 19" gear. Things are a little better on the front where going from my 30T ring (standard road triple) to a 24T would get me to the same place. Handily, 24T is the smallest ring that most road and touring triples will take. So I'm good to go. Well, shifting might be worse, but should be okay with grip shifters or bar-end shifters. A 34T rear combined with the 24T front would even get me to about 18 gear inches, but on my 8 speed rear I prefer the 32T cassette. If you have a 700C rear wheel you're going to need that 34T rear to get down to 19 gear inches.

I'm using a simple spreadsheet to play with these gear variables, but there are plenty of good gear inch calculators on the web.