Newbie question on gears

[Tigerbiten]

Two things to think about is both the gear range and the gear bias.
Old school gears which I grew up with tended to have a 3x range, 100"-35".
I could just hit 30 mph pedalling downhill and +20% hills where hard work.
Modern gears tend to have a 4x-5x range.
The bias is where does most of that extra range go.
Typical road type bikes tend to be biased high, 125"-35".
They're great if you want to pedal downhill at 35 mph but you'll still struggle a bit on +20% hills.
Touring/MTB type bikes tend to be biased low, 100"-20".
You'll still have to work hard to hit 30 mph downhill but even +25% are easy.
Over a 6x range is possible if you want to push the limits, just not standard.
My bent trike is very non-standard with a 19x range .......
So think about your riding style and what you want out of your new bike.
Then think about which way you want to bias the gears, "fast down" or "easy up" ??
If you pick "fast down" then the small chainring will be bigger than the big sprocket.
If you pick "easy up" then the small chainring wants to be smaller than the big sprocket.
This will give you an idea of what's the gearing like on a bike and will it suit you with just a quick look at the specs.

Luck ............

 

[DRM]

So a 1x10 set up? Wouldn't be my choice for a hilly area

It’s a 2x cyclocross chainset, will give a slightly lower gear set up

 

[Reynard]

As I've mentioned, being near Dartmoor mtself, I built my own bitsa - road frame (still limited to 25mm tyres), mtb transmission. So it has 30/36 as lowest. If you want to get into the nuts and bolts, it can get you a bike money can't buy!

This in spades ^^^

Then you're not limited to what the bike manufacturers *think* you want, and you will have a bike that is perfectly tailored to you. I've done the exact opposite, putting touring bike gearing on a mountain bike frame, as here, it's, well... rather flat...

 

[Lovacott]

It's not a question of how many gears or "cogs" a bike has when you're working out how easily it'll go up hills.
It's how many teeth there are (a) on the rear cassette (where more teeth and a larger cog means easier pedalling), and (b) how few teeth the smallest ring at the front has (where less teeth or a smaller ring means easier pedalling).

I have a 21 speed MTB (3 on the front and 7 on the back) and I was regularly using the smallest ring on the front, biggest on the back for the steeper climbs on my commute when I first started out.

What I've been doing each day though, is seeing how hard a gear I can utilise on the same hills. I was doing this mainly to build muscle strength by increasing resistance. I'm now at the stage where I don't need to use the small ring on the front any more.

This has opened up the possibility for me buying a hybrid with an 18 speed setup with higher gearing therefore faster speeds on the flats.

MTB's have the granny ring for steep woodland hillside tracks with obstacles, but for road use, you would only need to use that ring if you were relatively unfit (as I was). In my teens and twenties, I used to fly around everywhere on a five speed racing bike and maybe only used a couple of the rings on a regular basis. I'm a fair bit older than that now, but I'm trying to get back to that level.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

An old-fashioned rigid steel hybrid or touring bike gives you the most versatility, biggest tyre clearances, and with the least effort to ride. Which to go for boils down mainly to whether you prefer flat bars or drops. Hybrids and tourers have pretty much the same geometry. I like both and ride both, but I buy all my bikes secondhand for bobbins, so I can afford to run as many bikes as I've got storage space for.
Suspension hybrids are a truly bastardised breed that are really 29er hardtails with skinnier tyres. In a sane world they wouldn't exist, but the marketeers cannot resist the urge to keep subdividing the basic genres of bikes into more and more niche segments in the hope of driving a few more sales. Skinny road tyres are no good to man nor beast on anything but billiard table smooth surfaces. I would suggest going for a minimum of 32mm, and preferably 35mm tyres, on either a hybrid or tourer, as the comfort difference compared to skinny tyres pumped up rock hard to prevent pinch punctures or rim damage is massive.. Frames with no clearance are no good if you want comfort on unpaved surfaces. Whilst a converted sporty road bike may make quite a nippy urban flat bar commuter, sorry @DCBassman they'll never achieve much in the way of ride comfort on 25's.

 

[Lovacott]

Skinny road tyres are no good to man nor beast on anything but billiard table smooth surfaces. I would suggest going for a minimum of 32mm, and preferably 35mm tyres.

When I was commuting on a skinny tyred racer, I got to work pretty quickly on the three days out of five that I didn't get a puncture. I also became a well practised expert on roadside puncture repairs.

Now that I am on fat tyres, it takes me a bit longer each day to get in but I have pretty much forgotten how to fix a puncture.

Simple fact is, you can't run slicks on a potholed country lane and you wont win an Olympic time trial Gold with 2.6 inch Mountain Bike tyres dragging you back.

There is no shangri la tyre setup which covers all bases and ticks all of the boxes and (in my opinion) there never will be.

 

[boydj]

When I was commuting on a skinny tyred racer, I got to work pretty quickly on the three days out of five that I didn't get a puncture. I also became a well practised expert on roadside puncture repairs.

Now that I am on fat tyres, it takes me a bit longer each day to get in but I have pretty much forgotten how to fix a puncture.

Simple fact is, you can't run slicks on a potholed country lane and you wont win an Olympic time trial Gold with 2.6 inch Mountain Bike tyres dragging you back.

There is no shangri la tyre setup which covers all bases and ticks all of the boxes and (in my opinion) there never will be.

I commuted for many years on busy main roads on a road bike with skinny tyres and I can remember very few puncture ( only two or three) in that time, which also included longer week-end runs on country roads. Minimum commute was 9 miles each way with the evening run extended at least once a week. It comes down to quality tyres at the correct pressure and checking for and removing flints from the tyres every couple of weeks. My tyre of choice was Conti GP 4 Seasons, Schwalbe Durano or similar with decent puncture protection, but still reasonably light.

 

[Lovacott]

I commuted for many years on busy main roads on a road bike with skinny tyres and I can remember very few puncture ( only two or three) in that time, which also included longer week-end runs on country roads.

It was over twenty five years ago, but I was running very narrow slicks on London roads. Fast as all hell when I had a good day but very (very very) prone to punctures.

There was no internet back then to give me advice so I simply accepted that three punctures a week was normal.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

You've got to remember that the tyres we ride on in this century are vastly more puncture resistant than the ones from the 80's and 90's and before. When I rode to work in the mid/late 80's on a 3-speed I got a few flats, and that was only 8 miles a day round trip. i was running pretty stout but unprotected 1 3/8" tyres on that bike. When I was a kid and used to tear about on a Raleigh "racer" shod with gumwall 1 1/4" tyres, I got plenty of punctures. Admittedly I did ride it a lot of miles and often in places probably not best suited to that sort of bike, but even so, regular punctures were a fact of life for all urban cyclists and riders of my age got plenty of practice fixing them as youngsters.

 

[Tigerbiten]

Going back that far I never suffered that badly from punctures.
But I did cut closed foam strips to add as an extra layer of puncture protection between the tyre and the inner tube.
Now-a-days this trick is built into a lot of more puncture resistant tyres.

Luck ........