Originally Posted by Looigi

I always find these discussion puzzling. Not the gearing part but the naivety about gearing. Perhaps it's a misapprehension but I would have thought that many in in the 50+ forum have driven standard transmission vehicles. If the engine is lugging, shift to a lower gear, if it's not putting out power because it's revving too high, shift to a higher gear, right? 4x4s often had two ranges, high and low, low for particularly steep slow going. It used to be common to select rear-end ratios based on the application/situation/event. Cycling is no different, except that it's automatically and "painfully" obvious when the engine is out of it's power band. I mean seriously, duh.