Chain Ring Advice
 

Wife has a Marin Sausalito E1 , 44T chainring, 11-51T cassette. Problem we are having is I like to ride fast (Fuji Absolute, 8 speed, old bike) and she has problem keeping up with me, on level surface she has to be in the smallest cassette sprocket, the bike uses Shimano Steps and is limited to 20mph but I'm not riding that fast . I contacted Marin and received this response :The short answer to your question is ‘yes’, you can change the gearing by swapping out the cassette or putting a new chainring on. For this task, I highly recommend going to your favorite bike shop to discuss what you want to do, what issues you currently have with the gears, etc. If you change one part, you might need to change another part to make it all work together. The shop, with your bike in front of them can discuss the options with you.

Good luck!

I've been riding for 55 yrs and have always self maintained my bikes so looking for advice should I try a cheap solution like a cassette with a 10 tooth sprocket or go to a chain ring with more teeth ?

thanks

A 44:11 can easily get to 20mph at normal cadence. It’s not the gearing. It’s the motor cutting out.
or she perhaps is not used to pedalling at 80-90 cadence?

i'd try tricking the control unit by resetting the "wheel diameter" to a smaller wheel diameter.. :D
reduce inputted circumference to 20% less than present circumference....... 20% is easily estimateable to mentally correct the mileage, and speed readouts.
20mph becomes 24mph ground speed.... 15 becomes 18, etc.

and, from what your post says, it may not be correctly set now.

:thumb:

I have shimano's project e tube installed, I'll have to look and see if there is a parameter for wheel circumference that is end user accessible - some say only a dealer can change that setting, had I known how controlling Shimano is with their e bike sw I wouldn't have bought the bike. The Marin might not be the best for how the wife rides - it has 10 speeds, 11-51t , better suited for hills but Marin markets it as an "urban commuter".

What I didn't mention in my post is that I also have an E bike - a Specialized Turbo Tero 3.0 which can go 28 mph and has far superior SW to Shimano's , I do use this bike to ride with the wife occasionally but rarely use more than 20% electric assist, the majority of the time ride with 0 electric assist.

My thinking going to a larger chain ring will allow use of more of the 10 speeds, seems stupid gearing that on level she is riding in the 11T sprocket.

BTW - I bought the Marin from Jensen USA and could be that it;s incorrectly setup, when I received the bike it wasn't setup correctly - one wheel not trued and wouldn't shift into the 2 lowest sprockets, Jensen sends you a pic of the technician and says their bikes are doubled checked, I complained and they gave me I think a $50 credit as asked me to take it to my local bike shop and send them the bill, but to Jensen's credit they made me happy.

My son rides a Revel high end mtn bike - has a shop do all of his work despite me showing him how much $$ can be saved diy.

well I have a specialized e bike and it shows the cadence, shimano I don't think does this so I have no idea what her cadence level is, but as I mentioned seems stupid to gear a bike with 10 speeds that has to be ridden mostly in the 11t cog. Shimano is lame compared to the Specialized SW.

Fair enough then - I’d go for a bigger chain ring personally. The cassette range is already huge.