Many of us here use this web app to examine potential drivetrains and the gear ratios they produce:
Bicycle Gear Calculator
Gives you a nice graphical view of how different chainrings and cogs result in easy or difficult gearing - we usually talk about "easy or difficult gearing" in terms of
gear inches. Many of us older folks like our gear inches to be under 20.
Here's the web app displaying my current gearing setup (nice and easy low gear under 19
gear inches):
Bicycle Gear Calculator
One thing you can ask a potential mechanic is "how would you modify this bike to get the gear inches under 20?"
Ideally you could find a bike that already has the gearing you want, using the mentioned web app to understand the gearing the bike has. You could plug in (via drag and drop) the gearing of a bike you have now just to understand the gearing you're dealing with now, and this will give you something to compare against potential bikes.
Originally Posted by
mams99
What this makes me realize is that I need to 1. find a really good bike mechanic who is willing to experiment the bike and 2. learn all of this myself. The latter is not going to happen most likely - The cost of that for one bike would be more than paying someone to do it.
And finding a bike mechanic who has the time and knowhow is not easy. It's not cost effective for them to tinker on one bike for long and that is completely understandable. I need to find a local hobbyist I can trust!