Old 10-17-12, 11:11 AM
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bud16415
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Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN
I have been using one and a half step gearing for about 8 years on my LHT. When I built up another touring bike 2 years ago, I decided that I liked it so much that I used the same exact gearing on that bike too. I use a 52/42/24 front with 11/12/14/16/18/21/26/32 eight speed rear.



I do not use the 2 most cross chained gears with each chainring, thus I only use 18 of the possible 24 gears. This gives me this kind of gearing shown in the chart, lowest gear plotted on the left and highest gear plotted on the right. The Y axis is gear inches with a tire that has a diameter of a 26X1.5 Schwalbe Marathon tire, the color coding is for which chainring is used for that gear and the key to color coding is on the right of the graph.



I used half step on one bike the I rode from the late 1970s until about 12 years ago. It took a while to get used to one and a half step after using half step for all of those years, but I eventually got used to it. I tried substituting a 46t chainring for the 52 to get half step gearing, but I bought an uncompilable ring and gave up on that experiment, the problem was thickness of the ring and not the toothcount.

Bottom line - I concur that it is GREAT to have a wide selection of gears in the range where you want them. Unladen, I am in the range of 60 to 90 gear inches over 90 percent of the time. With a camping gear load, I spend 90 percent of my time in the 50 to 80 gear inch range. So this setup results in almost half of my gears being evenly spaced throughout those ranges where I spend almost all of my time. Thus, if there is a slight change of grade or change in windage, it is very easy for me to compensate for that minor change by making a slight gear shift. The 24t gives me the bail out gears that I need for the steeper hills. And, I occasionally use the highest two gears when I have a long shallow downhill which is not that uncommon on some of the rail to trail routes.



Please be nice. Nobody is telling you that you have to buy it.



I use a chain catcher to help keep from dropping the chain when I shift from teh 42t to the 24t. I agree that the shift from the 24t up to the 42t is not a smooth shift, but I am only on the 24t chainring for the worst hills. Thus, I do not make this upshift very often. I almost always can make this shift over a distance of less than 30 feet. A friction front shifter is needed for this.


Tourist in MSN

You are just about exactly where I was other than tire size. And I was quite happy with the one and a half step as well. I started with a 30t as granny and wanted to go to 24t but the reviews were sketchy with anything less than 26t so I did that and it left me just a little shy of the lowest gear I wished for after trying the mountain crank with a 22t granny on my 11-32 cassette. That’s when I found the 12-36 and thought that 36 will make up for the 26t. I was at the bike shop one night and saw a bunch of rings hanging on a hook and asked to look thru them and there was my 24t marked with a 30 year old price tag. I told the guy want to sell this or hang it 30 more years. I was pretty sure after using the 26 with index I could make it work. I’m really glad it did now because the index works so well on the half step pair.
When I had the mountain crank on I experimented a lot with the super low granny gears it gave me and my cadence on some really steep hills around here. I forget now but at one point I was at 15.5 GI or something like that and I could climb the north face of El Capitan, but I was spinning my brains out just keeping from tipping over. I figured out for me my get off and push GI was 18. The beauty of the wide cassette is I get 6 granny gears to pick from going as hi as 36 GI. And now that I can shorten my chain I can get one more taking me to 40 GI. That might be the reason I will shorten it in fact. With the 24 being a bit of a shift it’s nice on a rolling climb to have a range of granny gears to pick from. One of the reasons a mega range cassette never appealed to me.

When I went to the 26t I added the chain minder (plastic tooth type) I never knew if it was doing much but after a time I took a close look and there is wear and tear on the catcher so those would have been thrown chains I’m sure. With it I have never had one.

Like you I had that super high 120 or something GI and I also would use it on long downhill’s keeping moving. The 101 GI I have now will be more than enough I feel. And if my legs get cold I can soft pedal and coast as it will take me up to about 30 MPH on a grade at 100 RPM before I run out.

Sounds like you could be tempted to go back to half step. ;o)
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