Originally Posted by
noglider
You must need pretty good balancing skills to ride such a low gear. My wife isn't very strong so she needs low gears to climb hills, but she can't use her lowest gear because she loses her balance at such slow speeds. So she ends up walking up the hills.
On the geared Hub Bikes Yahoo group a couple of posters, both bike mechanics I believe, told of building bikes with low gears of 13" and 10.9" for customers. The 13" low bikes for hauling cargo trailers in Marin county and the 10.9" gearing for loaded touring in the Andes. Apparently the owners learned to balance the bikes ok at the very low speeds involved in such usage so it can be done.
With things like the Schlumpf mountain drive available the mechanical limit for how low you can go seems to be pretty open if you can learn to balance at the speeds involved.
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Gear Hubs Owned: Rohloff disc brake, SRAM iM9 disc brake, SRAM P5 freewheel, Sachs Torpedo 3 speed freewheel, NuVinci CVT, Shimano Alfine SG S-501, Sturmey Archer S5-2 Alloy. Other: 83 Colnago Super Record, Univega Via De Oro
Visit and join the Yahoo Geared Hub Bikes group for support and links.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Geared_hub_bikes/