SkipdiverJohn
Deplorable Brexiteer
- Location
- London
Been thinking about the gearing on my couple of salvaged fixer-uppers and comparing this to my old 5 speed racer I had when I was a teenager and the 3-speed roadster that replaced it. All 4 bikes were/are on 26" diameter rims.
My teen years 5 speed Raleigh I would guess (I can't remember the exact front sprocket count but probably around 48T or so) ran gearing between about 44 and 89, and I tended to use 2nd, 3rd, 4th most of the time as 1st was too low to bother starting from on the flat and 5th was too hard a slog to push against unless you were pointing downhill with a tailwind. So to all intents and purposes, the bike was mainly used as a 3 speed.
When I replaced the 5 speed racer with a 3 speed Sturmey geared roadster I found a similar thing; the 1st gear was ok for pulling away, 2nd was for general use, but 3rd was again really a bit too high unless gradient and wind conditions were in my favour. So most of the time the roadster was only ever ridden as a 2 speed.
My Apollo skip bike is a 10-speeder and IIRC runs 36 & 48T on the front and a 14-17-20-24-28T cluster at the back. If I discount the 2 worst gears for chain deflection reasons I end up with an 8-speeder giving me a set of ratios between 33 and 89.
The Freespirit skip bike is another matter. That runs, IIRC, a 24, 34 & 42T set on the front and a 14-16-18-21-24-28T rear cluster. Again, if you ignore the chain-deflecting offenders you end up with 16 useable speeds, but the low range is silly low - from a 22 to a 39 gear! Realistically, given my local terrain and intended use, low range is totally superfluous and will not even get used. Middle range gives me six ratios between a 32 and a 63 gear and the high range gives me 5 ratios between a 46 and a 78 gear.
My dilemma here, given the rubbishy twist grip shifters, do I persevere with keeping the bike as a 16/18 speeder, or do I just remove the front changer mech for simplicity, and run the bike as a permanent 5/6 speeder? If I do this, do I opt for the flexibility and lower gears of the middle chainring, but limit top speed, or do I leave it permanently on the biggest sprocket and accept that sometimes I might have to slog it harder? I weigh 190-ish lbs and I'm not going to be carrying heavy shopping or anything similar. The bike I would guess is about 35 lbs, much the same as my old 3 speed roadster.
My teen years 5 speed Raleigh I would guess (I can't remember the exact front sprocket count but probably around 48T or so) ran gearing between about 44 and 89, and I tended to use 2nd, 3rd, 4th most of the time as 1st was too low to bother starting from on the flat and 5th was too hard a slog to push against unless you were pointing downhill with a tailwind. So to all intents and purposes, the bike was mainly used as a 3 speed.
When I replaced the 5 speed racer with a 3 speed Sturmey geared roadster I found a similar thing; the 1st gear was ok for pulling away, 2nd was for general use, but 3rd was again really a bit too high unless gradient and wind conditions were in my favour. So most of the time the roadster was only ever ridden as a 2 speed.
My Apollo skip bike is a 10-speeder and IIRC runs 36 & 48T on the front and a 14-17-20-24-28T cluster at the back. If I discount the 2 worst gears for chain deflection reasons I end up with an 8-speeder giving me a set of ratios between 33 and 89.
The Freespirit skip bike is another matter. That runs, IIRC, a 24, 34 & 42T set on the front and a 14-16-18-21-24-28T rear cluster. Again, if you ignore the chain-deflecting offenders you end up with 16 useable speeds, but the low range is silly low - from a 22 to a 39 gear! Realistically, given my local terrain and intended use, low range is totally superfluous and will not even get used. Middle range gives me six ratios between a 32 and a 63 gear and the high range gives me 5 ratios between a 46 and a 78 gear.
My dilemma here, given the rubbishy twist grip shifters, do I persevere with keeping the bike as a 16/18 speeder, or do I just remove the front changer mech for simplicity, and run the bike as a permanent 5/6 speeder? If I do this, do I opt for the flexibility and lower gears of the middle chainring, but limit top speed, or do I leave it permanently on the biggest sprocket and accept that sometimes I might have to slog it harder? I weigh 190-ish lbs and I'm not going to be carrying heavy shopping or anything similar. The bike I would guess is about 35 lbs, much the same as my old 3 speed roadster.
Not sure your average commuter would want to be doing that on a fixie... 
But I suspect that's where the problem lies, rather than the bits around the chain 
