Lapped gears

DesB3rd

Living in the South East I haven't had much call to get out of my 50 chain ring but do get agrovated by the two tooth cassette shift 15-17-19, often there's a just-right gear somewhere in between but I don't have it, a very minor annoyance but still... However I ran up a quick SS this morning showing my ratios & now see that there are actually gears in there "holes" if I go into the small ring and use the overlap.

Question is does anyone actually use the overlap to "tweak" their ratios? Or is the faff of changing to the small ring and going up a 2-3 gears on the cassette more both than it's worth?

marcusjb

Is it worth changing your cassette?

What have you got on there at the moment?

A 10-speed close ratio cassette (11-21) from Shimano goes 15-16-17-18-19 - that's only in Dura-Ace - but in Ultegra 11-23 is available which will go 15-16-17-19

Personally I would find the thought of filling the holes by changing both shifters all the time a bit much - by the time you've changed down the front ring, flipped the rear dérailleur a couple of times, you've probably slowed down maybe 0.5kph and any potential benefit of filling that hole in the gears might have passed.

That's my thoughts anyway. Superclose ratio cassette would solve the issue- - but is clearly going to cost a lot for the Dura-Ace cassette. Gulp - just had a look on wiggle - list price is £180!

dgstewart

Not worth it for me. I run an 11/28 on both bikes (but then I live near the hills!), and think people moan too much about not finding the "right" gear - learn to pedal more flexibly, i.e. slightly higher and lower cadence as required. I think that makes you a more versatile ride. Just my opinion though...

I can understand the issue if you were time trialling, but people do tend to use closer ratios for that.

On that note, if it really bothers you and you never get out of your 50 ring cause it's so flat, then why not get a close ratio cassette like a 12/23, which goes 12,13,14,15,16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23 and then use your small front ring if you do need a lower gear? Simple enough.

esspeebee

The other thing to consider is that the gaps in your cassette are at the lower end (bigger sprockets), so often if you're in the big ring and wanting to be in those gaps then your chain is crossed anyway. Conventional wisdom would suggest you should probably be in a smaller chainring then, even if you didn't have that gap between sprocket sizes.