Gear selection shifting advice

allen

When I am out on my triple equiped road bike I generally ride on the middle and outer front rings and when climbing drop down the gears on the cassette and only use the inner ring as a bail out - almost viewing usage of it as a sign of weakness ! Is this the best way or should I be dropping into the inner ring more when climbing and clicking up the box as it were. Any thoughts people ?

rake

your doing it right. use the small if you need it but not if the middle ring has that same ratio. the smaller front rings will put more stress on the chain and more bending force on the rear axle for a given gear/pedal input being equal.

GiantMike

The front/rear cogs are just ways of getting different ratios. If you have 30 front and 20 rear that's the same as 36 front and 24 rear.

Just make sure you don't cross the chain too often i.e. small ring front and smallest ring rear and vice versa because you want to keep the best tension and try to keep the chainline roughly straight to aid shifting.

While you're lugging the weight of an extra ring around you may as well use it.

keef66

Lugging?

Maybe if the rest of the bike was made of rice paper the weight of an extra chainring might be significant, but in the real world it isn't.

Some hills I know I can (just) get up using 39-25, so I stay in the middle ring as a kind of challenge. On others where I know this isn't possible I try to anticipate when to shift onto the smallest chainring so I still have 3 or 4 rear sprockets to shift down. I often double shift, ie go down a sprocket at the same time as dropping onto a smaller chainring so the jump in cadence isn't too big which loses momentum. I am also constantly aware of the chainline and try to avoid the extremes, although when I go out at night I quickly lose track of which combination of chainring and sprocket I'm using. Sometimes I unexpectedly run out of sprockets and then realise I'm not on the chainring I thought

neeb

The only reason you might want to go into the smaller ring when starting a climb is if you think you will need to use it before you get to the top - you don't want to be shifting at the front when you are on the steepest part of the climb, you are running out of gears and your cadence is low...

Sounds like you'd be fine with a compact double - if you're only using the smallest ring as a bailout, you're probably only using the larger gear ratios on that ring, which would be the same as the smaller ratios on a 34T.

tarquin_foxglove

allen wrote:

When I am out on my triple equiped road bike I ... only use the inner ring as a bail out - almost viewing usage of it as a sign of weakness ! Is this the best way or should I be dropping into the inner ring more when climbing and clicking up the box as it were.

When I first got back into riding the bike had a triple and I viewed it the same way but I've come to regard that as incorrect and a better use of the gears is to start the bottom of the climb on the chainring you will finish it on and go up & down the cassette as required.

Using Sheldon Brown's calc, on a std 52-42-30 triple with a 9 spd 12-25 cassette, 30x14 is the shorter than 42x19 & will give you a couple of extra ratios before 'bailout status' is attained.

In 30x14 you'd probably need to watch your chainline and not want to be in it all the time but it should be ok as a starting point.

Alibran

If I know the climb, and know I can finish it on the middle ring, I'll stay on the middle ring.

If I'm already tired, even if I can usually manage on the middle ring, I'll often use the small ring.

If I know it's a tough climb or I'm not sure, I usually get on the small ring at the bottom. Unless you're climbing at a high cadence (which most of us don't) changing to a smaller ring part way through the climb is difficult and not great for the bike.

Use it if you need it, don't use it if you don't. That's my philosophy!