I've been messing around with Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Gear Calculator and mapped out the ratios on my bikes. While riding I tried to take notice of which gear I preferred on each and it turns out on level ground I like a gear of around 85 to 90 inches. This was a pretty useful exercise because it showed me I should swap the cassettes on two of my bikes and helped me develop a shifting strategy for hills on my normal commuter that uses the gears more effectively. It got me wondering what gear other people are pushing?

Great question. It'll take me a while to figure out what gear inches I ride in most of the time. I know on my Surly LHT when cursing on the flats I only have a couple of gears left to go. It has a Deore XT and 26" wheels.

A whopping 65 inches. My bike has been geared that low for ten years, and I'm jealous of anyone pushing something higher

44x16x23-622

Single speed set-up.

72.3 GI.

Wouldn't mind switching the DICTA freewheel for a 15T (77.1 GI) or 14T (82.6 GI) as I'd like a little more cruising speed and my commute has only one hill to speak of.

It depends on the season. During winter I ride lower gear ratio, during, spring, summer and fall I ride higher gear ratio.

Bike No 1. - Fixed gear 68-73 gear inches
Bike No 2. - Fixed gear or singlespeed 58-65 gear inches
Bike No 3. - Singlespeed 56-61 gear inches.

Hmm, not sure.

On a fixed my gearing is 64 inches, and I have dropped the chainwheel sizes on my geared bikes (one is 50-40-30, the other is 44-36-28, but my Scot is still 52-42). When riding a geared bike I try to maintain a cadence of 90 plius, with over 105 if i'm going for it. Higfher cadence really helps my knees.

Nexus 8, 42/20, 700x37 - according to Sheldon Brown this gives a gear range of 30 to 92 inches. I always ride on flat terrain, 90% of the time in 5th or 6th gear, 57 or 70 inches. That's a big gap, maybe it would be better to use a 23 and have 6th and 7th (61 and 70 inches) as my most used gears.

Depends on bike.

Varies anywhere from 60 gear inches to 80 gear inches. My two speed is 49 and 68. 68 is cruising and 49 is climbing.

On flat, usually around 80 (53x17).

Looks like anywhere from 77-94, depending on the head wind and grade. Flat, no wind should be around 88.

Road bike: 34.5-109.9
Commuter: 19.6-102.4

AW3 15t, Brompton 349-35 tire-wheel 54t chain ring . [hub high is x1.33]


& 2 Rohloffs , 16t cog chainring size varied to match wheel size 20", 53t, 26",38t 18~90" in 14 steps..


DIY math , if it matters..

Me too!
On my skinny tired hybrid, my "cruise" is 61 or 66 GI. Maybe 72 if I'm "fresh" and have a tail wind.
I try to spin 80-85 RPM.
My emphysema means spin lower gears if I don't want to gas out.

My SSCX is 65.2 g.i. (39x16) for commuting. You've got to spin it, kid.

On my derailleur bikes, I generally find myself in the 67-85" range during my commute (it's relatively flat, and slightly uphill to work, slightly downhill home.)

The fixed-gear is set to 71" during the spring-summer-fall, and switched to 59" for winter.

70 inches on the FG commuter - my biggest hill on the way to work is a street overpass on the MUP.

I told you it was good at climbing......

- Andy

Here's my old (and gone) trek's numbers......



You can see now why i love my uptown frankenbike so much more..... it just has a better drive system and a bigger range.

- Andy

OMG Must Know More!

Make it easy in three steps:

1: Go here.
2: Plug in your numbers.
3: Play!!!!

All you need to know about your current gear inches and what effect any tooth count changes that you perform will make.

A 50-15 is 88 gear inches, and a 50-14 is 94 gear inches.
At my preferred 90 rpm, the 15-15 is 23.5 mph, and the 15-14 is 25.2 mph.

I'm more at a range of 50-19, 18.6 mph, to 50-17, 20.8 mph. 70-78 gear inches.

eastbay71, check out Mike Sherman's gear calculator.
You can change any of the settings and the charts update on the fly. And the "Speed over RPM Range" chart is interesting.

45, 60, and 80, with 60 being my typical level ground cruising gear.

Especially when you check the "Sort" box.

It lays out how each rear cog relates to each other when paired with the different chainrings. It give a great visual image of what happens from big to small ring and how many cogs it affects in the rear.

Living in the foothills of the cascade range means lots of hills and a mile long 10%+ grade on my daily commute, but I'm a masher, not a spinner, and couldn't care less about cadence and such nonsense, so I don't need lots of gears, and can't stand derailleur shifting.


Ross MTB porteur 7 speed IGH (commuter) .......31.7 - 77.6 GI
Robin Hood 8 speed IGH (utility)..................... 26.2 - 80.2 GI
Raleigh Sports Model 3 speed IGH (recreation)...51.8 - 92.1 GI

Eventually the Porteur will get a Nuvinci N360 ...25.1 - 90.4 GI

I need 40-70 on my commute. I use the 55-70 shift quite a lot on the level. There are a few downhill spots I can push 100 but it's not really needed. That's just for the commute, though. There are a lot of other uses for a bike where I could use a 20. That's what the MTB is for.

I like the double shift on my MTB and would like to have it on the commuter too, but it's good enough.

This is pasted from my gearing spreadsheet, apologies for formatting

[TABLE="width: 415"]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]3rd[/TD]
[TD]2nd[/TD]
[TD]1st[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]"Alpine"[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]52[/TD]
[TD]40[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]cassette[/TD]
[TD]5x14 to 28 FW2[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]11[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]9[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]8[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]7[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]6[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]5[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]14[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]101.5[/TD]
[TD]78.1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]4[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]16[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]88.8[/TD]
[TD]68.3[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]3[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]20[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]71.0[/TD]
[TD]54.6[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]24[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]59.2[/TD]
[TD]45.5[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]28[/TD]
[TD]no gear[/TD]
[TD]50.7[/TD]
[TD]39.0[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]