Fun triple GEARING setup

On 12/5/2015 5:50 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

The funny and strange thing about a lot of bicyclists (or so it seems from reading some of these replies) is that they choose and install gearing for the terrain *WHERE THEY RIDE* NOT where someone else hundreds or even thousands of miles away rides.

I've ridden some pretty darn steep hills with just a 42 x 24 combination on one of my road bicycles.

Cheers

And speaking of terrain, steepness, etc.: I've wondered about a system
for describing the hilliness of a ride in a way that a person in
California could compare with a person in Ontario, in Ohio, in Florida.
(Well, OK, not in Florida. The only hills there are the bridges.)

"Steep" gets covered by percent grade. But one short 20% grade doesn't
make an otherwise flat ride very tough.

"Feet climbed" seems the most common. But 1000 feet climbed as a
continuous 5% grade seems way easier to me than 1000 feet of climbing a
series of super-steep, choppy up-and-down Appalachian hills.

Our club asks volunteer ride leaders to tell if a ride is flat, rolling
or hilly. But even that is a vague judgment call. On man's "hilly" is
another man's "rolling."

There are the climb "categories" in things like the Tour de France. But
I don't know how they're calculated. Or is it just a judgment thing?

Cheers

Thanks for the extra Cheers. It fits the season!

--
- Frank Krygowski

"Frank Krygowski" wrote in message ...
On 12/5/2015 5:50 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

[snip]
There are the climb "categories" in things like the Tour de France. But
I don't know how they're calculated. Or is it just a judgment thing?

The categories are calculated first based on an algorithm which takes account of length, gradient and altitude and then "judgement" is applied depending on where the climb occurs within a stage and what has proceded it. A climb rated as a Cat 1 at the start of a stage can easily become a Hors Cat if it occurs as a mountain top finish at the end of a mountain stage.

Cyling websites such as Strava, MapMyRide and ClimbByBike have come up with their own versions of the algorithm to classify climbs on their sites which do not involve any judgement they are just based on a one off climb. If you regularly use any of these sites or similar to plan your routes then you will quickly get used to what their various category of climb feels like.

Graham.

---
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On Saturday, November 28, 2015 at 11:55:25 AM UTC-8, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
I just built up another MTB converted to drop bars.

I put on a 28-38-48 triple crankset. For fun I rooted through all my spare cassettes and took out the pins to separate the cogs. Then I sorted the cogs and built myself a 9-speed straight block 11-19 cassette. Tires are 2È x 2.0 knobby ones.

The high gear is 108 gear inches and the low gear is 39.8 gear inches.

Took it out for a few rides on rolling terrian with varied road surfaces ranging from smooth as glass pavemet to very bumpy dirt roads.

It seems like I was able to get the EXACT gear I wanted even when there were only slight variations in the inclines or road surface changes.

I just might leave this as it is.

Cheers

I prefer a 12-28 and a compact double and normally climb everything from Mt.. Diablo or Mt. Hamilton to every other available road under 13% in the 34-21 gearing. Most of my rides are 40 miles or more. The lower gears are for when you get tired or when you hit that occasional 16% grade.

The trouble with triples is that they always pose shifting problems.

But in the 34-21 I've done more than a mile of 12% on a pretty heavy bike.

Of course there are people that find a normal low gear of 42.6 inches too much to handle (you might say the average people) but riders don't have problems.

On heavily loaded touring bikes a 26-28 is usually enough but you might prefer a 26-32 if you can put one together. I think that Wheels Manufacturing makes new freewheels and semi-threadless bottom brackets.

On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 8:21:56 AM UTC-8, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 10:19:14 AM UTC-5, Duane wrote:
sms wrote:
On 11/29/2015 3:41 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 28 Nov 2015 11:55:22 -0800 (PST), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:

I just built up another MTB converted to drop bars.

I put on a 28-38-48 triple crankset. For fun I rooted through all my
spare cassettes and took out the pins to separate the cogs. Then I
sorted the cogs and built myself a 9-speed straight block 11-19
cassette. Tires are 2È x 2.0 knobby ones.

The high gear is 108 gear inches and the low gear is 39.8 gear inches.

Took it out for a few rides on rolling terrian with varied road
surfaces ranging from smooth as glass pavemet to very bumpy dirt roads.

It seems like I was able to get the EXACT gear I wanted even when there
were only slight variations in the inclines or road surface changes..

I just might leave this as it is.

Cheers

That is roughly what I use on my "Phuket Bike". I probably have never
used the 108" combination but I can tell you that I certainly use the
lowest gear. Usually coming home from a 4 hour ride and climbing the
big hill I need to get over to reach the house :-)

--

Cheers,

John B.


39.8 as the low gear on a triple. Must nut be very steep hills. You'd be
doing a lot of walking around here. An 11-19 seems especially strange
with only a one tooth difference per gear.

This is what you'd use here, a 12-36:
http://www.jensonusa.com/Shimano-CS-HG400-9-Speed-Cassette.

Or do a 3 x 11 with this 11-42:
http://www.jensonusa.com/Cassettes/Shimano-XT-CS-M8000-11-Speed-Cassette


He lives in Ontario. Why does he need a bike that can get up your hills?


--
duane

Once again SMS shows he doesn't know what he's talking about.

My 28 - 19 low gear of 39.8 gear inches isn't that much higher than the 37.6 gear inches of a 39 - 28 double.

I can climb some prety steep hills with my 39.8 low gear. Besides, like yiou said, my gearing is for me in the area I ride in not for someone living in the mountains.

Cheers

With 34-28 I've done the last 100 yards of Mt. Diablo which is about 20% and a 1/4 miles section of two hills near Novato, CA which are 22% straight on without weaving but I can't say that I was happy with it.

Luckily it's winter time and time for cross riding. Short rides.

On Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 3:10:43 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/5/2015 5:50 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

The funny and strange thing about a lot of bicyclists (or so it seems from reading some of these replies) is that they choose and install gearing for the terrain *WHERE THEY RIDE* NOT where someone else hundreds or even thousands of miles away rides.

I've ridden some pretty darn steep hills with just a 42 x 24 combination on one of my road bicycles.

Cheers

And speaking of terrain, steepness, etc.: I've wondered about a system
for describing the hilliness of a ride in a way that a person in
California could compare with a person in Ontario, in Ohio, in Florida.
(Well, OK, not in Florida. The only hills there are the bridges.)

"Steep" gets covered by percent grade. But one short 20% grade doesn't
make an otherwise flat ride very tough.

"Feet climbed" seems the most common. But 1000 feet climbed as a
continuous 5% grade seems way easier to me than 1000 feet of climbing a
series of super-steep, choppy up-and-down Appalachian hills.

Our club asks volunteer ride leaders to tell if a ride is flat, rolling
or hilly. But even that is a vague judgment call. On man's "hilly" is
another man's "rolling."

There are the climb "categories" in things like the Tour de France. But
I don't know how they're calculated. Or is it just a judgment thing?

Cheers

Thanks for the extra Cheers. It fits the season!

--
- Frank Krygowski

It isn't clear to me how to rate rides in that manner. I've done 50 mile rides with 5,000 feet of climbing most of it 8% or better and a typical ride I would do is at least 2500 feet including long (over a mile and sometimes over 3 miles of 10%) hard sections. Remember that what goes up must come down do you get to rest too. So my rides normally average around 12-15 mph.

But I don't see that as harder or easier than a tour down the coastal highway with a 50 lbs of gear and a 200 miles ride. On the steep hills you use lower gearing and go slower. We do overnighters where we try to get a SAG and ride between 60 and 100 miles and return the next day. Usually there is a large hill in the way since you have a hard time going anywhere on the coast or in the Sierras without hard climbs. The 70 mile ride around Lake Tahoe has one really hard climb and two not quite as hard climbs. And that is a mile high so there's a certain lack of O2.

I'm 70+ and I do these all the time. One overnighter was a dead flat ride from San Jose to San Juan Batista. But it was through farm country in the harvest so even the little backroads had large trucks and tractors shooting by at 50+ mph while we're carrying backpacks since we couldn't get a SAG. The route back was 1500 ft of climbing that was too easy but for the last 1/2 mile. It was 3% or so and after you've been riding that for a mile it feels flat. Just your speed is lower than normal. Since the second day didn't have nearly as much traffic it was actually MUCH easier then the flat ride of the day before because of the loss of nervous tension.

If there is a long enough dry spell I'll get in another 350 miles and make 7,000 miles for the year but it looks like a long rainy season has started.

On Sunday, December 6, 2015 at 12:35:11 AM UTC-8, Graham wrote:
"Frank Krygowski" wrote in message ...
On 12/5/2015 5:50 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

[snip]
There are the climb "categories" in things like the Tour de France. But
I don't know how they're calculated. Or is it just a judgment thing?

The categories are calculated first based on an algorithm which takes account of length, gradient and altitude and then "judgement" is applied depending on where the climb occurs within a stage and what has proceded it. A climb rated as a Cat 1 at the start of a stage can easily become a Hors Cat if it occurs as a mountain top finish at the end of a mountain stage.

Cyling websites such as Strava, MapMyRide and ClimbByBike have come up with their own versions of the algorithm to classify climbs on their sites which do not involve any judgement they are just based on a one off climb. If you regularly use any of these sites or similar to plan your routes then you will quickly get used to what their various category of climb feels like..

Graham.

I walked up the first 1/4 of L'Alpe d'Huez and I most definitely was not impressed. Remember that these hills are necessarily hard because of their steepness and length but because of the unbelievable speed Pro's ride up them at.

On 06/12/2015 17:10, wrote:

I walked up the first 1/4 of L'Alpe d'Huez and I most definitely was not impressed. Remember that these hills are necessarily hard because of their steepness and length but because of the unbelievable speed Pro's ride up them at.

Not impressed in what way? It's a fairly normal alpine climb, but the
painted roads add some ambience, and the numbered hairpins give you
targets. It's much prettier when you pop out of the top and go to the col.

It's a challenge if you treat it as such.

Walking up it would be boring.

On Sun, 6 Dec 2015 08:38:14 -0800 (PST), wrote:

The trouble with triples is that they always pose shifting problems.

I'll wager that a triple is easier to shift than a double that's
really a triple with the middle chainwheel missing.

(Needed lower gears; didn't want to buy a whole crankset.)

But it shifts down reliably, and fussing a little when I shift up is
seldom a problem.

I can't believe that I got this old before I learned to use a stick
found along the road to put an unshipped chain back on. I used that
trick for the first time last Saturday -- when I was checking out a
newly-opened multi-user path with deep mud on both verges, so I had to
keep walking until I found a stick that had fallen onto the asphalt.

Which wasn't very far even though the wheel prints of muddy
construction machinery were still on it; the "greenway" was cut
through a patch of woods.

This "bikepath" makes sense: It connects the dormitories of the
college to its athletic field, and there are intersections only at the
ends.

--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

On Mon, 07 Dec 2015 00:59:58 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Sun, 6 Dec 2015 08:38:14 -0800 (PST), wrote:

The trouble with triples is that they always pose shifting problems.

I'll wager that a triple is easier to shift than a double that's
really a triple with the middle chainwheel missing.

(Needed lower gears; didn't want to buy a whole crankset.)

But it shifts down reliably, and fussing a little when I shift up is
seldom a problem.

I can't believe that I got this old before I learned to use a stick
found along the road to put an unshipped chain back on. I used that
trick for the first time last Saturday -- when I was checking out a
newly-opened multi-user path with deep mud on both verges, so I had to
keep walking until I found a stick that had fallen onto the asphalt.

Which wasn't very far even though the wheel prints of muddy
construction machinery were still on it; the "greenway" was cut
through a patch of woods.

This "bikepath" makes sense: It connects the dormitories of the
college to its athletic field, and there are intersections only at the
ends.

Assuming that you are using a bike with a rear derailer a pair of
"examination" rubber gloves (non sterile thus cheaper) makes it easy
to put the chain on, or do other messy tasks, and ride away with clean
hands :-)
--
cheers,

John B.

On Sunday, December 6, 2015 at 8:38:18 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Saturday, November 28, 2015 at 11:55:25 AM UTC-8, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
I just built up another MTB converted to drop bars.

I put on a 28-38-48 triple crankset. For fun I rooted through all my spare cassettes and took out the pins to separate the cogs. Then I sorted the cogs and built myself a 9-speed straight block 11-19 cassette. Tires are 2È x 2.0 knobby ones.

The high gear is 108 gear inches and the low gear is 39.8 gear inches.

Took it out for a few rides on rolling terrian with varied road surfaces ranging from smooth as glass pavemet to very bumpy dirt roads.

It seems like I was able to get the EXACT gear I wanted even when there were only slight variations in the inclines or road surface changes.

I just might leave this as it is.

Cheers

I prefer a 12-28 and a compact double and normally climb everything from Mt. Diablo or Mt. Hamilton to every other available road under 13% in the 34-21 gearing. Most of my rides are 40 miles or more. The lower gears are for when you get tired or when you hit that occasional 16% grade.

The trouble with triples is that they always pose shifting problems.

I don't think triples pose shifting problems, but they are more complex -- and a modern compact and 10/11 speed drive train provides a more than adequate gear range for most people. In fact, the 50/34 and 32 big cog 11sp stock set up on a lot of the "endurance" bikes (Roubaix, Synapse, Domane, etc.) is way over-kill for me, even in my aged and decrepit state. The aging boomer market is changing stock gear ranges.

-- Jay Beattie.