Originally Posted by
paulriccio
You posted a long time ago but had a question for you. I have a similar old bike and had a bike shop replace my freewheel to a 28t. My plan was to get a new crank and derailleur for under $100 ish. Was that 3t jump enough to get you up hills? I am literally passed by senior women on hills. That happened lol.
This really depends on what you mean by "hills" and what the terrain is like where you live. Around here, pretty much every ride I do finds me on at least one 15+% grade, and for every 10 miles of riding there's 1,000 to 1,500 feet of climbing. Although in my younger days I did this routinely (though painfully) with a 42-25 or 42-28 low gear, I now look back on that and think "what was I thinking?" I suggest that you plot out gears on a gear chart (here's a good one:
https://ritzelrechner.de/ - set "Display" to "Gear Inches"). If you're doing hills like what I do you'll want a low gear below 30" unless you have legs like tree trunks. For modest hilly terrain a low gear is the mid to low 30s somewhere is alright for most people. Note that a 42-28 low gear is about 41".