Originally Posted by
Moisture
Thought this might make for some interesting conversation.. lets say you can spec your bike with any sort of ratios you want. What are you picking?
1. What sort of terrain do you ride on?
2. What sort of bike is it?
3. How hilly is the area you ride in
4. Whats your current ratio spread and how does it suit your needs?
5. How would you change it?
1. Pavement, gravel, dirt, forest fire roads and trails, beach. That includes some mud, some loose sand, snow, pretty much anything except rocky surfaces which are very rare around here.
2. Hybrid with front suspension (dual sport type).
3. Mostly flat, longer climbs are rare, but there are some short and steep ones.
4. 44/32/22 front, 11-32 9s rear. I could do without the lowest gears; the high end is about right.
5. A subcompact double (46/30) on the front would probably make sense, but I don't care enough to replace my current XT crankset, which, while an older model, is still really nice. The couple hundred of grams of possible weight saving means nothing to me. I might get an 11-28 cassette though.
Originally Posted by
Moisture
Interestingly enough, I found a Biopace Mountain LX crankset made by shimano (28/38/48) . Never seen that sort of spacing before. Typically lower end mountain bikes come with 22/32/44. Woukd be interesting to give this unique ratio spread a try.
Nothing unique about that gear spacing, that's a typical hybrid/trekking triple crankset. Other common verison is 48/36/26. Shimano still produce them at all price levels from Tourney up to XT.