Old 09-24-21, 03:02 AM
  #28  
Tourist in MSN
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Madison, WI
Posts: 11,212

Bikes: 1961 Ideor, 1966 Perfekt 3 Speed AB Hub, 1994 Bridgestone MB-6, 2006 Airnimal Joey, 2009 Thorn Sherpa, 2013 Thorn Nomad MkII, 2015 VO Pass Hunter, 2017 Lynskey Backroad, 2017 Raleigh Gran Prix, 1980s Bianchi Mixte on a trainer. Others are now gone.

Mentioned: 48 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 3462 Post(s)
Liked 1,468 Times in 1,145 Posts
Originally Posted by djb
ya, 48/31 and 11-34 (not that odd, as road cranks have been 50/39 and 50/39/30 for ages and ages.)

but lets face it kids, 48 is still overgeared, but this bike is clearly aimed at the strong and fast crowd hammering it with the guys. .....
My road bike came with compact double, 50/34.

I can see some committee sitting in a meeting saying, if it is gravel we should drop the gearing lower than road gearing. Some say no, those that say yes can't agree how low. The one in charge of the meeting says, corporate wants an answer by 4pm. They all compromise at compact double as the base standard but drop two teeth on each ring. And none of them ride a bike except for occasional family outings. That is how important decisions are made by people that have no business making decisions.

I know a couple hard core roadies that bought gravel bikes in the past two years, they ride them on pavement but on rare occasion one of them will ride it on gravel rail trail. Marketing told them to own gravel bikes, so they complied.

My road bike came with 13/29 Campy cassette. I like having a downhill gear, I learned that Miche made a 12/29 that fits on my Campy hub so I bought that to slightly increase my highest gear for the occasional long shallow downhill. Yeah, I only ride that on pavement, so should have road gearing. I use that as an example, sometimes a high gear is nice to have.
Tourist in MSN is offline