Originally Posted by
freckles
thank you all for your advice- this is such a great forum!
i think its more fear of breaking/ruining my first ever brand new bicycle by cross chaining the gears or some thing else but ya'll gave me some confidence
and will try those gears out again this saturday!
It's pretty hard to actually break something if the derailleurs are properly adjusted and the chain is long enough to go oneo the cig ring up front and the big cog on the rear. That's called cross-chaining and it causes rapid wear on the components. Besides which that gear combination is duplicated or nearly duplicated elsewhere on the combinations. The other combination you want to avoid is small ring up front with the small cog in back..
Are your barend shifters indexed? That is, do they click each time you make a shift?
Cheers