Knowing How Mountain Bike Gears Work
The gears in mountain bikes just keep getting more intricate. The bikes of today have as much as 27 gear proportions. An off-road bike will utilise a
Combination of three different sized sprockets in front and nine in the back to produce gear proportions.
The concept behind all these gears is to allow the rider to crank the pedals at a constant pace no matter what sort of slope the bike is on. You can understand this better by picturing a bike with just a single gear. Each time you rotate the pedals one turn, the rear wheel would rotate one turn as well ( 11 gear ratio ).
If the rear wheel is twenty-six inches in diameter, then with 11 gearing, one full twist on the pedals would lead to the wheel covering 81.6 inches of ground. If you’re pedaling at a speed of fifty R.p.m, this means that the bike can cover over 340 feet of ground per minute. This is only 3.8 Miles per hour, which is the equivalence of walking speed. This is excellent for climbing a steep hill, although bad for ground or sliding downhill.
To go faster you will need a different ratio. To ride downhill at twenty-five Miles per hour with a 50 Rpm intonation at the pedals, you’ll need a 5.6:1 gear proportion. A bike with a lot of gears will give you a large number of increments between a 11 gear proportion and a 6.5:1 gear proportion so that you can always pedal at 50 Rpm, no matter how fast you are actually going.
On an ordinary 27 speed mountain bike, 6 of the gear proportions are so close to one another that you can not notice any difference between them.
With tangible use, bicyclists have a tendency to select a front sprocket appropriate for the slope they are riding on and stick with it, although the front sprocket can be tough to shift under heavy load. It’s way easier to shit between the gears on the rear.
If you are cranking up a hill, it is best to select the smallest sprocket on the front then shift between the nine gears available on the rear. The more speeds you have on the back sprocket, the bigger advantage you’ll have.
All in all, gears are critical to mountain bikes as they dictate your overall speed. Without gears you would not be able to build speed nor would you be well placed to pound pedals. The gears will move the pedals and help you build up speed.
There are all types of gears available in mountain bikes, all of which will help you build up a lot of momentum if you use them the right way.
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Pete Merrigan, Mt. Spirits Tavern, 6/5/11