Or Bike Forums arguing over a helmet's effectiveness.

On my first 'nice' road bike, I had 53/42 chainrings, and a 13-23 7 speed cassette. Compared to the 13-30 cassette on my MTB, 13-23 seemed to offer super tight ratios.

My current MTB, which I've converted for light road bike use, is a 9 speed 11-34, and finding the right gear on flats is pretty much impossible.

I'm buying a new road bike now, and am leaning towards a 10 speed cassette with 12-30. That seems to me to be a pretty decent compromise between offering a low enough low with reasonably tight ratios in the middle of the cassette.

Compared to the 13-23 7 speed, the 12-30 10 speed is identical except that it has an additional 12, a 24 instead of a 23 for the 7th, and of course two additional gears with a 27 and 30. The first 7 gears, 12-21, should offer a pretty solid gear selection for the flats, with 3 extra gears for climbing. We'll see how well this theory works out IRL.

I am assuming the my S-Works helmet makes a huge difference at my 12-14 MPH pace.

I did not read the previous 14 pages, so maybe this has been said already.

I've been riding Ultegra 11-speed with a 50/34 crank and 11/32 cassette since June. On truly flat rides, like the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I do not find it limiting at all because I'm staying in the small cogs of the cassette most of the time and therefore the jumps between them are one tooth each.
Where I do sometimes notice the wide spacing is on slightly hilly rides when I'm using more of the cogs and then have to chose between two cogs that are farther apart. On rides like these a 11-25 would give me plenty of range but the one-tooth jumps for most of the gear changes.

But I do not do any racing and pacelining in groups is still pretty casual so I don't worry about it. For some of the climbing rides I've been doing this year I want the 28 and like knowing I've the 32 if I need (and I'm not too proud to say I do need it sometimes) so the trade-off is worth it for my.

Correct. Assuming circular chainrings, the mechanical advantage for the torque applied to the crank is strictly a function of gear ratios.

i haven't read all previous 14 pages either, but i'm pretty sure just about everything has been said, and most of it multiple times.

now it looks like we're venturing into the Mumbo-Jumbo Voodoo world of ovalized chainring physics.

Mea culpa. It was late and I had done a cold 65 mile ride with less than 400 feet of climbing (and all right turns) during the day which actually had me thinking about my cassette at times.

No. It's your chain lube.

J.

I ride the same with no issues. Amusing to read the expected and usual comments about "good cyclists" wouldn't ride this combo etc. Pfft. I can spin up an hill and ride in the flats and in a pace line just fine. The Specialized Roubaix and Cannonade Synapse come with this gearing I believe.

Yes I know this is an old thread, but I figure it's better to pose my question here than make a new thread on basically the same topic.

So I've been trying to figure out what combination to get (my area is mild, not a lot of hills to take advantage of high or low gearing really).

The bike I have my eye on comes with 50/34 11-32. Since my area is mild I was going to go for smoother shifts instead (taking a little off each end).

So at first I considered keeping it simple and just dropping to 50/34 11-28. Then I saw a few posts suggesting 50/34 12-25 instead (to bring the shifts together even more).

However, that got me thinking. Instead of 50/34 12-25, why not 46/36 11-28? From my math it's basically the same (yes there are more 2-tooth jumps but that isn't terrible is it?) and you can actually use the second chainring (you'd only need to downshift once to maintain a similar ratio as having 1 giant chainring).


(the numbers are MPH)

If you don't have many hills you don't really need two rings and would be better off with a tighter cassette. Select the big ring so you spend the majority of your time in the middle of the cassette.

Question, I picked up a 12-25 to swap out the 11-32 that my bike came with. I'm new to all of this - so, I've only been on my first few organized events that have had more hills than I normally ride with my 12-25 and I seem to find that especially toward the end of a longer ride (around 70 miles) I'm really hurting for a bigger gear on hills. Is it possible for me to mix the two cassettes up a little? They are both 105 cassettes. Could I more or less construct my own 11-28 from them or whatever works?