Originally Posted by
pastorbobnlnh
...and just think Kurt, with all those gears, you can ride that Sports back to NH and be able to tackle the hills easily when you turn away from the seacoast and head for the mountains!
Bob, I missed your comment - you must have posted it while I was responding to the others.
I calculated the gear inches on the G9 with the 19t it arrived with, and with the 46t crankset of the '80 Sports:
33.9|38.2|44.5|50.4|56.6|66.1|75.5|85.0|99.2
The '51 Sports, by comparison, is approximately (not really sure if it's an 18t or not in the back right now):
46.1|54.5|69.1|87.5
I usually sit around 2nd gear most of the time, except for starting out, and third has always felt a wee bit on the high side. Fourth makes no sense unless you're in a 18mph sprint after the USPS guy when a package isn't delivered. I'm essentially gaining two additional low gears with the G9, and about three additional (two low, one high) usable mid-range gears. The rest is exuberance.
Of course, I could always put a 21t cog on it and get an even more usable range:
30.7|34.6|40.3|45.6|51.2|59.8|68.3|76.9|89.7
It's a bit of a drop from 46.1 though, and I'd rather not have a bunch of crawling gears sitting near first. The shifter will run through 5 of the 9 gears with a single press up, but downshifts are single-return; you can't dump it going down - which is my biggest love of the Sturmey 4-speed trigger - I can dump it from 69 to 46 gear inches in a single throw.
I'm not thrilled about losing that, but it's not like there's a 9-speed thumb-actuated 1:1 shifter on the market today that'll dump all the gears on one click of the lever.
-Kurt