Advice on altering gearing on MTB

aarondown

Partly as a continuation ofthis post, I would like to upgrade/downgrade (depending on your opinion!) my MTB to a commuter.

The main problem I currently have with the chainset/cassette combination I have on the bike at the moment, is that I spend most of my commute between front-middle/rear 5th and front-top/rear 5th. I use front-top/rear 6th on good stretches but as it's a 7 gear bike I tend to run out pretty easily.

Essentially I'd like a bit more range in the top half wihtout losing the bottom half altogether (in case I change my commute and hills feature on it!). At the moment there seems a big jump between rear 5th and 6th and sometimes I'm left over-spinning in 5th.

This also wants to be cheap, I spend more money on my full-sus tbh!

Any advice/correction/gentle nudges would be appreciated.

supersonic

What are your cog ratios on the rear? Ie 11, 12, 13 etc?

tri-sexual

tell us your gear ratios for front and back (teeth numbers)
and what you are trying to achieve, then we can recommend chainrings and cassettes to suit your needs

sparky.2002

You've currently got 11t as top gear on rear cassette. That's as good as it gets. I would stick to your middle chain ring 32t and work your way up to 7th. Once you spin out just pop your front ring onto the 42t ring cog. Time your journeys - I couldn't believe how much quicker I got pedalling fast in a lower than 'normal' gear. High cadence, its the future.

diy

sparky.2002 wrote:

High cadence, its the future.

+1 - humans are just like engines, need to train to get your BHP up not your torque