dumb question from new cyclist about gears

"dave" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hello. I bought a bike about a month ago. It's the first time I cycled
in about 25 years and now cycle everywhere. The bike is a Giant
Expression. It has 18 gears. The left handlebar gear shift has 3
settings and the right has 6. I just wondered what is the best gear to
use for riding uphill. I've tried different gears but they all seem to
be equally hard. Thanks for any help.
dave

The lowest one! Which means smallest chain wheel, and biggest back cog. That
will also be the one in which you need to pedal fastest when on the flat.
However, for normal use you should try and avoid using both the very lowest
gear or two, and the very highest gear or two (biggest chain wheel at front,
smallest cog at back) because you will get increased chain wear (but dont
fret too much about it, its a suggestion not a rule and if the hill is steep
in either direction and especially up, use them!).

--
Tumbleweed

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com

Quoted message said:

However, for normal use you should try and avoid using both the very

lowest

Quoted message said:

gear or two, and the very highest gear or two (biggest chain wheel at

front,

Quoted message said:

smallest cog at back) because you will get increased chain wear

This is not correct.

It is the gear combinations that create the largest sideways movement of the
chain that increase the wear:

i.e.
innermost chainring - outermost sprocket
outermost chainring - innermost sprocket

That's not a problem as these gear ratios can be found using other
combinations that keep the chain straighter.

Ian

Tumbleweed said:

or normal use you should try and avoid using both the very lowest
gear or two, and the very highest gear or two (biggest chain wheel at front,
smallest cog at back) because you will get increased chain wear

What?

You should avoid using large/large or small/small because that gives a
really poor chainline and will increase wear and make the chain more
likely to come off or split.
--

Cheers,

Al

dave said:

Hello. I bought a bike about a month ago. It's the first time I cycled
in about 25 years and now cycle everywhere. The bike is a Giant
Expression. It has 18 gears. The left handlebar gear shift has 3
settings and the right has 6. I just wondered what is the best gear to
use for riding uphill.

It works very much like the gearbox in a car. If it's a steep hill and
you haven't got a run at it you'll want the lowest gears straight away,
if it's not quite so gruesome you may not have to drop quite so far.
A big difference is you don't have as much torque as a car engine, so
you'll typically have to drop more gears.

Thin of gears as "higher" and "lower". If it's a terrible strain to
turn the pedals you want lower, and if they're zooming around so fast
you can hardly push on them you want higher.

The two shifters you have do different things. Left shifter moves the
chain between front chainwheels, where bigger wheels mean higher gears.
Right shifter changes rear sprocket, where smaller cogs mean higher
gears.

Try and shift slightly before you /have/ to. Derailleur gears don't
change well under high loading, so you'll change more smoothly with less
chance of throwing the chain if you can be pre-emptive changing. Note
that "high loading" means straining on the pedals: they do have to be
going round to change gear, so you want to change before you feel the
need to stand on the pedals.

The lowest gear is the small chainwheel (1 at the front) and the big cog
(1 at the back), and if you're still straining up hills in that then
you just need more practice. There's no substitute for practice when it
comes to getting up hills, so just keep at it.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

in message <[email hidden]>, dave

(') said:

Hello. I bought a bike about a month ago. It's the first time I cycled
in about 25 years and now cycle everywhere. The bike is a Giant
Expression. It has 18 gears. The left handlebar gear shift has 3
settings and the right has 6. I just wondered what is the best gear to
use for riding uphill. I've tried different gears but they all seem to
be equally hard. Thanks for any help.

The lowest ratio you have is to have the chain on the smallest chainring
('granny ring'😉 at the front, and the largest cog at the back. That is
to say, innermost to innermost. How that translates to numbers on your
handlebar depends on the make and model of your shifters.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; single speed mountain bikes: for people who cycle on flat mountains.

"Al C-F" <[email hidden]> wrote in
message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Tumbleweed said:

or normal use you should try and avoid using both the very lowest
gear or two, and the very highest gear or two (biggest chain wheel at

front,

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

smallest cog at back) because you will get increased chain wear

What?

You should avoid using large/large or small/small because that gives a
really poor chainline and will increase wear and make the chain more
likely to come off or split.
--

I stand corrected, (and have learnt something today!) :-)

--
Tumbleweed

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com

dave said:

It's the first time I cycled
in about 25 years and now cycle everywhere.

Hurrah!

Quoted message said:

It has 18 gears. The left handlebar gear shift has 3
settings and the right has 6. I just wondered what is the best gear to
use for riding uphill. I've tried different gears but they all seem to
be equally hard. Thanks for any help.

Think of the chainrings (the three front gears, operated by the
left-hand shifter) as your three main settings.

The middle chainring is for "normal" riding.
The small chainring (gear #3 on your shifter) is for going uphill.
The large chainring (gear #1 on your shifter) is for going fast.

Use the right-hand shifter to make fine adjustments within these main
settings - if you feel like you are spinning the pedals faster than is
comfortable, change "up" a gear (select a /lower/ numbered gear on the
right-hand shifter); if your pedalling slows down and you feel like you
are pushing harder than is comfortable, change "down" a gear (select a
/higher/ number on the right-hand shifter).

This is a rather over-simplified way of looking at it, but it might help
you get the hang of the way gears work, and once you have reached that
stage you can then start to think about gear selection issues in more
depth. (I hope that doesn't sound patronising!)

d.

I said:

The small chainring (gear #3 on your shifter) is for going uphill.
The large chainring (gear #1 on your shifter) is for going fast.

Actually, I may have got those the wrong way round. I can't remember off
the top of my head and I can't be bothered to go out to the shed and
check what it is on my bike.

d.

davek said:

I said:

The small chainring (gear #3 on your shifter) is for going uphill.
The large chainring (gear #1 on your shifter) is for going fast.

Actually, I may have got those the wrong way round. I can't remember
off the top of my head and I can't be bothered to go out to the shed
and check what it is on my bike.

Yes, they are the wrong way round the correct way is:

The small chainring (gear #*1* on your shifter) is for going uphill.
The large chainring (gear #*3* on your shifter) is for going fast.

Ambrose Nankivell said:

Yes, they are the wrong way round the correct way is:

Cheers. I knew it looked odd as soon as I'd posted it.

d.

[email hidden] (dave) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

I've tried different gears but they all seem to be equally hard.

All hard I can understand, but all /equally/ hard doesn't make sense.
The first thing I'd check is that your wheels are rotating freely.
Lift them up one at a time and give them a gentle spin. There should
be no appreciable resistance and they should continue to rotate for
many revolutions before slowly coming to rest.

--
Dave...

Quoted message said:

The two shifters you have do different things. Left shifter moves the
chain between front chainwheels, where bigger wheels mean higher gears.
Right shifter changes rear sprocket, where smaller cogs mean higher
gears.

Try and shift slightly before you /have/ to. Derailleur gears don't
change well under high loading, so you'll change more smoothly with less
chance of throwing the chain if you can be pre-emptive changing. Note
that "high loading" means straining on the pedals: they do have to be
going round to change gear, so you want to change before you feel the
need to stand on the pedals.

The lowest gear is the small chainwheel (1 at the front) and the big cog
(1 at the back), and if you're still straining up hills in that then
you just need more practice. There's no substitute for practice when it
comes to getting up hills, so just keep at it.

Thanks for the quick replies. That's all very useful. Sounds like I'll
need to practice a lot more on hills. And maybe I should buy a chain
tool just in case. Thanks again.
david

Dave Kahn said:

The first thing I'd check is that your wheels are rotating freely.
Lift them up one at a time and give them a gentle spin. There should
be no appreciable resistance and they should continue to rotate for
many revolutions before slowly coming to rest.

That's good to do except some MTB hubs with external rubber boot seals
normally have enough drag to slow the wheel quite quickly when tested
gently. It isn't enough drag to notice while riding, fortunately. In any
case, a duff wheel would have to be incredibly bad to make a low gear feel
like a high gear.

I think the original Dave just needs to practise with the gears more: play
with the levers and see what they do; look at the chain to see and
understand what's going on. It takes plenty of rides to get the hang of
it. I'll never forget being confused by double derailleur gears the first
time I used them. Of course triples must be even trickier for newcomers.
Get riding position comfortable with saddle up reasonably high and give
the pedals some welly!

~PB

[email hidden] (dave) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hello. I bought a bike about a month ago. It's the first time I cycled
in about 25 years and now cycle everywhere. The bike is a Giant
Expression. It has 18 gears. The left handlebar gear shift has 3
settings and the right has 6. I just wondered what is the best gear to
use for riding uphill. I've tried different gears but they all seem to
be equally hard. Thanks for any help.
dave

It occurs to me (based on your question) that some of the replies may
prove a little hard to visualise and then put into practice. If you
bought the bike from a real shop you may be best going back there and
asking for a quick tutorial. If you bought it online you could try
going to your local bike shop and buying something like mudgards,
spare inner tubes, pump etc etc in excahnge for a similar tutorial.
Or you could just try asking another cyclist. Cyclists who know about
these things like nothing better than the chance to bore th pants of
you with for more detail than you need but you should get an answer
that you can use.

I'll not miss an opportunity to contradict my onw point and have a go
with an explanation. Something that may not be obvious if you've
never thought about it is that the three ranges of gears that you have
(1-6 on the back for each of the three on the front) overlap so the
number sequence of gears isn't the same as the ease of pedaling.
Think of one to three on the front as meaning Uphill (1), normal use
(2) and Downhill fast (3) (bit don't feel bad if you find 1 to be fine
for noram riding for example). Within each of these ranges you have
one to six where one is easier pedalling, lower top speed and six is
harder pedaling, higher top speed. Most novice cyclists use higher
gears than is ideal. It is more efficient to pedal faster (and easier
on your knees) than to push really hard.

The point about chain line means avoid 5 & 6 with 1 on the front.
Avoid 1 & 6 with 2 on the front, avoid 1 & 2 with 3 on the front.
Nobody dies if you select these gears but you can get the same gear
ratio with another combination and your chain will be under less
strain.

best wishes
james

dave said:

Quoted message said:

The two shifters you have do different things. Left shifter moves the
chain between front chainwheels, where bigger wheels mean higher gears.
Right shifter changes rear sprocket, where smaller cogs mean higher
gears.

Try and shift slightly before you /have/ to. Derailleur gears don't
change well under high loading, so you'll change more smoothly with less
chance of throwing the chain if you can be pre-emptive changing. Note
that "high loading" means straining on the pedals: they do have to be
going round to change gear, so you want to change before you feel the
need to stand on the pedals.

The lowest gear is the small chainwheel (1 at the front) and the big cog
(1 at the back), and if you're still straining up hills in that then
you just need more practice. There's no substitute for practice when it
comes to getting up hills, so just keep at it.

Thanks for the quick replies. That's all very useful. Sounds like I'll
need to practice a lot more on hills. And maybe I should buy a chain
tool just in case. Thanks again.
david

'Hills' do get easier - they really do. Just take it steady, and don't
knacker your knees. And remember there's nothing wrong with walking the
rest of the way up a hill. Next time, you'll get further up it before
having to walk :-)

--

Velvet

Peter Clinch said:

It works very much like the gearbox in a car. If it's a steep hill and
you haven't got a run at it you'll want the lowest gears straight away,
if it's not quite so gruesome you may not have to drop quite so far.
A big difference is you don't have as much torque as a car engine, so
you'll typically have to drop more gears.

Thin of gears as "higher" and "lower". If it's a terrible strain to
turn the pedals you want lower, and if they're zooming around so fast
you can hardly push on them you want higher.

Hi Peter

I haven't been on a "proper" ride for quite some time; the last one I
did was through the South Downs. As usual, I shifted to a lower gear
as a hill steepened but, all too often, found myself spinning away but
not achieving a great deal in the forwards direction.

For the next hill - it was comparatively short but reasonably steep -
I elected to stay in quite a higher gear but get out of the saddle and
feel the agony (OK, a slight bit of lactic acid pain).

I certainly found that climbing these short hills in a semi-grinding
manner was easier than spinning up them in lower and lower gears.

However, when I did come up on a longer biggun, I reverted to the
seated and spinning method.

James

dave said:

Hello. I bought a bike about a month ago. It's the first time I cycled
in about 25 years and now cycle everywhere. The bike is a Giant
Expression. It has 18 gears. The left handlebar gear shift has 3
settings and the right has 6. I just wondered what is the best gear to
use for riding uphill. I've tried different gears but they all seem to
be equally hard. Thanks for any help.

Generally you aim to keep your pedalling speed constant. If your road
speed drops (because you're going uphill, for example) you need a lower
gear in order to maintain the same pedalling speed [1]. Of course, you
can get out of the saddle and crank up the hill in a high gear if you
want - it's just that this is hard on the knees and is more tiring for
long hills.

[1] even with 18 gears and using the lowest gear available, there are
some hills where your pedalling speed will drop. They're usually the
ones with two arrows on an Ordance Survey map!

[email hidden] (james) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (dave) wrote in message > It occurs to me (based on your question) that some of the replies may
prove a little hard to visualise and then put into practice. If you
bought the bike from a real shop you may be best going back there and
asking for a quick tutorial. If you bought it online you could try
going to your local bike shop and buying something like mudgards,
spare inner tubes, pump etc etc in excahnge for a similar tutorial.
Or you could just try asking another cyclist. Cyclists who know about
these things like nothing better than the chance to bore th pants of
you with for more detail than you need but you should get an answer
that you can use.

I'll not miss an opportunity to contradict my onw point and have a go
with an explanation. Something that may not be obvious if you've
never thought about it is that the three ranges of gears that you have
(1-6 on the back for each of the three on the front) overlap so the
number sequence of gears isn't the same as the ease of pedaling.
Think of one to three on the front as meaning Uphill (1), normal use
(2) and Downhill fast (3) (bit don't feel bad if you find 1 to be fine
for noram riding for example). Within each of these ranges you have
one to six where one is easier pedalling, lower top speed and six is
harder pedaling, higher top speed.

Thanks again for all the comments. I did buy my bike from a good local
bike shop. But to be honest I was a bit too embarresed to go back and
ask them such a trivial question 🙂 The explanation of gears above is
perfect and just what I wanted. I do try and use lower gears when
going up hill but, as one of the messages said, although it's easier
to pedal, I end up going so slowly it's easier to just walk 🙂
I now nearly always stay in the 2nd setting. The 1st setting is always
too slow and my speed is never fast enough for 3rd.

Thanks again for all the advice. /david