Don't Laugh.......I have a triple

[ColinJ]

If you want to compare sprocket/chainwheel combinations that you have with combinations that you don't have, try www.gear-calculator.com

I like that!

PS But having played with it, I think that we should be able to set our own limits. For example - I was riding up a very steep hill at 5 km/hr the other day in a 28/30 gear and I wondered what my cadence was but I can't lower the cadence far enough to see that speed. I worked around it by finding the cadence that gave me 10 km/hr and halved it. (84 rpm -> 10 km/hr so 42 rpm -> 5 km/hr.)

PPS I have just discovered that the setup is SUPPOSED to allows the limits to be changed ... Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Firefox and Chrome on my laptop. I don't normally use IE, but found that setup DID work on that. Aaargh - no it doesn't! There is something odd going on but I am not getting any warnings or error messages so I don't know what.

 

[freiston]

I like that!

PS But having played with it, I think that we should be able to set our own limits. For example - I was riding up a very steep hill at 5 km/hr the other day in a 28/30 gear and I wondered what my cadence was but I can't lower the cadence far enough to see that speed. I worked around it by finding the cadence that gave me 10 km/hr and halved it. (84 rpm -> 10 km/hr so 42 rpm -> 5 km/hr.)

PPS I have just discovered that the setup is SUPPOSED to allows the limits to be changed ... Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Firefox and Chrome on my laptop. I don't normally use IE, but found that setup DID work on that. Aaargh - no it doesn't! There is something odd going on but I am not getting any warnings or error messages so I don't know what.

That's strange - I just tried all sliders and also setting the minimum cadence to '20' in Firefox and Chromium (open source version of Chrome) on a Linux Mint 17 machine and everything worked fine.

 

[ColinJ]

That's strange - I just tried all sliders and also setting the minimum cadence to '20' in Firefox and Chromium (open source version of Chrome) on a Linux Mint 17 machine and everything worked fine.

I'm on Windows 7 on this old laptop! Hang on, I'll try it on my new Windows 10 machine ... (I love the keyboard on the old machine so I tend to use it for the forum because I do a lot of typing.)

 

[ColinJ]

Nope - it doesn't work properly on that either in Chrome, or Edge!

 

[freiston]

Maybe it's a Windows thing

Edit: I have a laptop that has Win10 loaded onto it and I just tried the calculator as per my earlier post (changing cadence lower limit to '20' etc.) in IE, Chrome and Firefox - worked in all three.

 

[Tigerbiten]

It works fine for me.

But I cannot get it to show my forth chainring as it limits it to 99 teeth.
55t + HSD = 137.5 teeth.

 

[ColinJ]

Hmm ... I'd like to get it working properly so I'll see if I can work out what the problem is.

It is fine generally, but even with my low-geared triple, my cadence on 25% climbs is below the default minimum. (Before anybody else gets in - yes, the problem is with my fitness, not the calculator - ha ha! )

 

[freiston]

It works fine for me.

But I cannot get it to show my forth chainring as it limits it to 99 teeth.
55t + HSD = 137.5 teeth.

Schlumpf?

 

[gilespargiter]

Not sure what the trouble is with the gear charts you are using but here is one you can have for your very own selves in gear inches. It is in excel format and if you use it as such you can enter the wheel and tyre sizes for precise answers. Don't worry to much though - the difference between mtb 26" and old fashioned 27" is very slight and encompasses 700 - 650 etc.
Knowing your gears in inches relates to any bike with any wheel size and gives you a measurement you know the "feel" of on any bike.

I always ride triples here in Wales and I love hill climbing (luckily - or needs must :-) ) I at the present use bikes with 52-40-28 or 48-38-28 chain rings with 11 or 12 to 32 cassettes. This gives me a cor-blighme top gear of 128" - that I can just about pull for around a mile on a flat road, about 30 odd mph for a decent cadence. To a 23" bottom gear, which means their are no hills I can't ride up when loaded with clothes, lunch and repair kit, including the one from Harlech rail level crossing across the upper high street and thence to the top - said to be the steepest continueous pitch in the UK - including Bean- nearg(?) in Scotland, which I have also ridden several times.

However when I'am carrying camping kit or when at the end of a ride I can occasionally be defeated and thus I'am contemplating going to a granny of 26 or 24 teeth - thus achieving around a 19-20" bottom gear. I use steel rings for the granny and prefer steel for the middle ring, they last three or four times as long as aluminium rings and are well worth the extra 1/2oz or so. I tend to rip the teeth out by the roots on small aluminium grannies.
If the cycle industry persists in making cassettes last less and less miles - as they are, I shall very likely have a local motorcycle sprocket maker produce a seven speed cassette with proper hardened steel 3/32" sprockets for me. This will be cheaper and more reliable.

Also I find that with wide range double chain rings the range change (as with lorries) comes at a very awkward point in the gear range. You will find that in traffic or fairly steep switch back roads you are forever up and down the range change as well as the rear sprockets.

 

[Tigerbiten]

I've also tried to maximize my gear range.
Plus I've tried to make the difference in size between my chainrings an exact step between my Rohloff gears.
A Rohloff has a 13.6% step between gears.
3 gears gives you a 44.6% step between chainrings.
A 130mm BCD means a small chainring of 38 teeth.
38 x 1.446 = 55.7 teeth.
I've a 55t chainring because the 56t is to big to fit with my chain guard.
So I've 14 gears with my Rohloff plus 7 more due to the Schlumpf drive plus a final 3 with the chainrings.
This is 24 unique gears with ~13.6% step between gears for a total range of 1,890%.

Nothing beats pedalling slowly downhill in top gear at 40 mph .........

 

[Andy808]

A big thanks to all those that posted with useful and insightful info on the triple saga. I will be keeping the triple set-up and just tweeting the rings until I get what I feel comfortable with. If or when a new bike arrives I'll be getting a triple for that as well. One thing of interest from this thread though is that triples most certainly are not dead and a lot of people still use them and a lot people wish they had them, which begs the question why the big manufacturers are not really making them anymore ?? There's definitely a market out there. Cheers everyone.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I'm on Windows 7 on this old laptop! Hang on, I'll try it on my new Windows 10 machine ... (I love the keyboard on the old machine so I tend to use it for the forum because I do a lot of typing.)

Swap keyboards between your machines

 

[ColinJ]

Swap keyboards between your machines

They are both laptops so the keyboards are built-in!

I have actually sorted out one of the three major problems with the Win 10 machine's keyboard. The spacebar was not working properly from the day I bought it - only about 2/3 of spaces appeared in what I was typing. That might not be a big deal with (say) the 'z' key (typing English) but who could put up with a 33% failure rate with spaces! It turned out that one end of a metal rod under the spacebar was not clipped in properly. I fixed that and it is perfect now.

The second thing that annoys me is a stupidly small right shift key with the up arrow key to the left of it. I frequently press the up arrow instead of shift so I end up inserting a lowercase letter a line above where I intended to insert an uppercase letter. I read about a bodge which might alleviate that problem but am yet to try it (swap the key assignments and keycaps).

The final problem might be harder to fix. For some unknown reason Lenovo put a power button on the keyboard where the delete key should be! The delete key is one key to the left. Fortunately, a power-off delay is built in so I realise that I have hit the wrong key before I accidentally power down the machine, but it still interrupts the flow of my typing.

My final gripe is that the Lenovo keyboard feels like I am tapping a dead fish, whereas the Dell feels almost as nice as my favourite desktop keyboards used to feel!

None of this would matter very much if I had the computer on a desk because I could just use my rather nice Bluetooth keyboard. Unfortunately, my DVT-ravaged left leg now complains bitterly if I sit normally at tables or desks for more than a few minutes. I'll have to find a combination of chair and footrest that enable me to sit in comfort at my desk again. For now, my laptop IS a laptop. (Well, strictly it sits on top of one of those laptop trays that have a little beanbag attached underneath.)

How did we get onto all of this ...? Oh yes, I can't get that gear calculator to work properly - I'll add it to my todo list...

 

[FishFright]

I've also tried to maximize my gear range.
Plus I've tried to make the difference in size between my chainrings an exact step between my Rohloff gears.
A Rohloff has a 13.6% step between gears.
3 gears gives you a 44.6% step between chainrings.
A 130mm BCD means a small chainring of 38 teeth.
38 x 1.446 = 55.7 teeth.
I've a 55t chainring because the 56t is to big to fit with my chain guard.
So I've 14 gears with my Rohloff plus 7 more due to the Schlumpf drive plus a final 3 with the chainrings.
This is 24 unique gears with ~13.6% step between gears for a total range of 1,890%.

Nothing beats pedalling slowly downhill in top gear at 40 mph .........

Now be really brave and add up the cost ! Nah not really because once something has been paid for it's essentially free*

*irrational numbers are the key to advanced man maths.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

once something has been paid for it's essentially free*

*irrational numbers are the key to advanced man maths.

Not really free, but It becomes water under the bridge because if you just pay for stuff outright, you aren't constantly reminded of the cost every time a monthly repayment falls due.
The other aspect is that if you buy stuff that doesn't tend to depreciate heavily (maybe because it's already secondhand when you get it), you can then rationalise it on the basis that what you've actually done is bought an asset rather than just spent money that you won't see again.