Originally Posted by
armille1
What is the ideal number of gears in rear cassette? 12? 13? 20?
I think the bike industry keeps adding gears as a marketing tool, even if it is at the expense of engineering efficiency. Does anyone agree?
The more gears you add, you (i) lose chain thickness (so faster wear or lower tension limit), (ii) reduce the spoke angle (so less wheel strength) and (iii) maybe get thinner gears (so faster wear?). At what point is it too much?
How do you think this plays out over the coming years? Keep adding gears until there are too many snapped chains or taco'd wheels? I suspect that after 14-15 gears, chains will start to wear out too fast and customers will start complaining, and then they'll go back to 12 or 13 gears.
How do you think this plays out?
Thanks.
Modern 11 and 12 speed chains have actually been found to wear
less than the older 8, 9 and 10 speed chains. SRAM 12 speed chains have the longest wear life of any chains tested. So chain tech has more than kept pace with the increasing number of gears on the cassette. So your argument about snapping chains and excessive wear is a mute point. Similarly I don't think wheel strength will be an issue either.
So what are the limitations? Well I think it mainly comes down to the number of gears people are demanding rather than any real "technical" limitation. 14 or 15 unique gear ratios appears to be enough for the entire mainstream road, gravel, mtb market, which can be achieved today with a 2x11/12 or older 3x8/9 etc. The recent rise of 1x systems suggests that a significant part of the market (mtb, gravel in particular) are already happy enough with 11, 12 or 13 unique ratios. This is the tipping point.
So my prediction? In 10 years time 1x14 or even 1x15 right across the board. It's the logical end-game and resolves the long standing "wart" that is the front derailleur.