Teeth more... Or less???
 

I'm not sure what exactly more or less does. I went with a 52 and 40 toothed set-up on my chainrings did I choose poorly??? My choice was based on what my bike came with originally. The original rings looked like shark fins and the chain was about a 1" and half too long. The dude at the bike shop said my bike was suffering from I think he said "chain lagg". I didn't understand at first what he meant. I ask how much mew cjainrings would be? His response was $75 for the 52 and he couldn't even find the 39t chainrings. As luck would have it a few days later an unwanted women's world sport came in on a trade. He sold it to me for what I thought wasn't great price $50. I wasn't thrilled with the price but it had a barely used 3 pc chrank. So I bought it. Even though it had a severe case of garage rash, dry rotted tires and a lot of cobb webs once I started taking it apart the parts I did keep cleaned up nicely. After the fact I found a bunch of used chainrings on ebay for about the same price I paid for the whole bike. My question is this the large rings ranged from 53-48 and the small rings from 42-36. Is more better or, is less better??? Not that I'm going to change what I already have but, what does it do?

More teeth make you work harder but you also go faster with the same the cadence (chainring revolutions per minute).
More teeth on the rear cog make you go slower.
You need fewer teeth in the front and/or more teeth in the rear when climbing hills.
If you want to go faster without pedaling faster simply shift to a larger chainring in the front or a smaller cog in the rear.

Its a Ratio ... so remember you can have a 52:13; a 48:12; or a 44:11.. and still have the same gear, a 4:1...

It depends. 52 - 40 is pretty much a classic double. In the old days, they had freewheels rather than cassettes and the smallest cog on most freewheels was a 13 or 14 tooth. These days, many freehubs have a low gear or 11 teeth so you don't need a 52 or 53 tooth chainring.

Do you ride exclusively on flats? Are you young and very fit? Or are you past 40, or 50? And do you have to climb hills? I wouldn't touch a classic double with a ten foot pole.

That 52/40 combo would be quite good for mostly flat riding. On hilly routes, not so much.

What kind of shop can't find 39t inner rings? That's pretty much the standard.

Over 50 and I avoid hills like the plague!!!
 

No, not fit and, I was going for entry level. Even a classic is still better than one of those throw away cheapo bikes from wallyworld!!!

Yup, I need a smaller inner chain ring for the 52/42 combo on my older road bike, a Centurion Ironman that was probably designed for relatively flat triathlon courses. That 42 chain ring and 24 largest cog on the freewheel does not make for efficient hill climbing with 59 year old knees. I'm nursing a sore anterior medial patella strain after two weeks of mashing up hills on that combo.

Bigger chainrings and cogs have less wear and friction.

Use an online gear calculator to figure out the ratios that you need, then customize your gearing to your riding style.

I asked this question a long time ago to someone who I really respected their opinion. They told me that if there were hills that made you walk up, you need a smaller chainring. If the hills just made you wish you walked up, you were on the right track.

A lot depends on what freewheel or freehub you have. In general, though you might have a venerable old classic, it is probably geared too high for what you want to do.

I have a friend was in his late 60s when he returned to cycling after a hiatus of some years. For a variety of reasons, he stuck with his old 70s era bike with standard double. Though he changed out the wheels to modern, alloys, he complained he had trouble getting over hills. Though I wasn't 100% sure of the type freewheel he had, it looked like one of those 5 speed 14 - 28 "Touring" freewheels from back in the day, or maybe 14 - 26. Either way, his low gear was somewhere between 40 and 42 gear inches, which is just too high for an average guy in his late 60s. It was a leap of faith for him, but I explained that the original crankset is a poor choice for him because on the 52 tooth ring, he can only use the 2 easiest gears in back, and with the 40 tooth, while it is fine on the flats, the low gear is still too high for him to get over the hills. He bit the bullet and had the bike shop install an IRD 46/30 crankset, which when paired with the original freewheel is much better. On the 46 tooth ring, he can use basically all 5 gears and on the 30 tooth, he has a low gear of 29 gear inches to get up the steepest hills he is likely to encounter in his rides around Southeastern Wisconsin.

Another possibility is to remove the big chainring and turn your bike into a 1 x. You can pair this with a Shimano 6 speed megarange freewheel, which is 5 usefull gears for riding on flats relatively closely spaced between 14 and 24 teeth, and one 34 tooth bailout gear for use on hills.
https://www.niagaracycle.com/categor...FZm3wAodoowCIg

Time to change out your freewheel, and/or switch to a 46/30 or 44/30 compact double.

Smaller is more forgiving?
 

I have a mid 80's Schwinn w/ a 6 speed Shimano freewheel. If I understand correctly you're suggesting a smaller low gear on the crank and using a different gear ratio freewheel. I'll have to research my options. I have a Sakae SX crank w/ a 110mm bolt circle. If I went with a smaller low gear chainring like around a 46 and 42 on the high gear would that be more forgiving on hills and still give a decent range without changing the freewheel?

A smaller big ring will give you more useful big gears for riding on the flats. A smaller small ring will give you lower gears for climbing. A different freewheel will also help you ride hills. You can do both, or just one. My friend changed out his entire crankset.

On my wife's bike, we just removed the big chainring and the front derailleur effectively turning her drivetrain into a 1 x, and we changed out the freewheel (actually we did a bit more) from a 14 - 28 5 speed to an 11 - 32 9 speed freehub (and changed the wheel, and spread the chainstays so we could fit a 9 speed wheel, and replaced the old friction shifter with a modern, indexed 9 speed shifter). So the bike went from a 2 x 5 to a 1 x 9. By switching from a freewheel to a freehub with an 11 tooth cog, we kept almost the same high gear as she had before (100 gear inches with the current setup, previous high gear was 101 gear inches) and by going to a 32 tooth big cog, gave her a manageable 34 gear inch low gear, where as before, her lowest gear was 40 gear inches.

Now, what we did to my wife's bike was a bit of a project, but it wasn't rocket science. And we did it on a 70s era French bike. Pretty sure such a conversion would be easier on an 80s Japanese, Taiwan, or US made Schwinn.

So much of this depends on what kind of riding you're doing. If you're just riding easy on a nice flat bike path, you're probably fine the way you are. If that's the case, just ride for awhile until you become more familiar with your needs and more familiar with your bike.

If you're riding hills, especially if you're having trouble making it to the top, changing your gearing to something much easier is worth considering. Your easiest gear combination is the small (or smallest) chainring with the largest rear cog. If you count the teeth on both and use the formula front teeth over rear teeth, that tells you your "gear ratio". So, for example, if the small chainring has 40 teeth and the largest rear cog has 28 teeth, your gear ratio would be 40/28 or around 1.4.

You'll have a much, much easier time climbing hills if you create a gear ratio close to around 1.0. So, for example, you might consider changing your 40-tooth chainring to, say a 34 and changing your largest rear cog to around a 34 as well. If you can only get a 32 or even a 30 on the rear, that would still be much better than what you have now. Note that there is more to understand about gearing and that other changes will likely be required but this should get you started.

I think I'll try changing chainrings.
 

Changing chainrings is a lot easier and less expensive. Upgrading to a freehub set-up isn't cost effective with my old Taiwan Schwinn.

Not as expensive as you might think.