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Old 06-24-05, 11:13 AM
  #17  
stapfam
Time for a change.
 
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: 6 miles inland from the coast of Sussex, in the South East of England
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Bikes: Dale MT2000. Bianchi FS920 Kona Explosif. Giant TCR C. Boreas Ignis. Pinarello Fp Uno.

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Originally Posted by HiYoSilver
Whoa nellie. There is no such thing as a free lunch, especially in gearing.




Currently, you have one hard shift: from Cog 8 to Cog 7 at 14.3%. It's at a low cog so you can often skip this by using other gears.

Better than changing cassettes, the better option is to keep your cassette as it is nice and smooth and change your triple. Something like 24.38.48 would be a good combo. Again I would start with just the smallest chainring and hope that is enough. It just depends on what your monster hill is like. You can do some conditioning, but rather than tearing muscles it's better to get in the general range of acceptable gears first.
Don't understand all the %age on Gear ratios, but 11/32 is the normal rear casseete on Mountain bikes nowadays, and is not a problem on changes. Agree on if you like the spread of gears you currently have, then why change, but one of the things we are looking at is ease and cost of any changes. That is why changing just one sprocket on the front seeems to be the easiest and cheapest way out. I ride offroad, and 28 to 50 is too high for me. I use 11/32 cassette an all my bikes, 22/32/44 on the solo's and the beast(Tandem) has 24/36/48. Keeps it within the 24t changing regime and just about low enough. We have tried 12/34 on the cassette but we keep folding them and all the lower gear does is make us slower. This is offroad though where lower gears are necessary, but we do miss out on speed on the road, even though we can match most other riders with our higher cadence.

One point that has to be made though is that Cranksets are expensive. Like two to three times more expensive than a rear cassette, and that is only for the respectable quality units.
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