What is the BEST gearing for climbing? Steep climbing?

hello welcome back to rev endurance sports and another education video um from time to time i get questions in my shop about should i get this cassette or that cassette should i get this crank set or that crank set what you know this this this and just recently a um online customer purchased some brake pads told them that you know there's there's a supply chain issue and then he added a question and that's what i'm addressing today his question his name is phil phil thank you for prompting me to create this video which i've wanted to do for a long time but i just it's it's easier if i have a camera person to film me doing this okay what i wish to do today is talk to you about the most common crank set combinations and if we're talking about cassettes we're talking about road cassettes the gravel stuff is just it's a it's a completely different discussion and possibly a video in the future but because that's like one buy and then you get these big cassettes and whatever on the roadside there is a little bit more standardization and so that's what i wish to cover with you today first thing we're going to talk about is chain rings then we're going to talk about cassettes then we're going to talk about gear ratios in an easier way to for you to understand it and then possibly a recommendation for phil although i don't know enough about him to make this recommendation so this is just a generalized statement and hopefully he can glean some of the information that is applicable to him all right so here's how we're going to go first thing we're going to talk about is the most common chain ring combinations 5339 and what that means is that your big chain ring is a 53 and your little chain ring is a 39 and you know just like this so imagine that this is this okay big chain ring little chain ring so 53 this is a 55 but anyway 53 39 okay and so when you hear people talk about a 53-39 that's generally called a standard crank set then you hear people talk about a 50-34 big chain ring 50 inner chain ring 34 that's most commonly known as a compact crank set and just to give you a little bit of history the compact crank sets came around because triple crank set for lack of a better i guess reason they were complicated to adjust they were heavier bigger something blah blah blah personally i think a triple crank set is awesome uh because then you can have a really small uh cassette cassette range and you have a lot of gear range and all your space is really close um in other words the cogs are not spr spread out as much for example if you were to look at the one by mountain bike cassettes they're like a 1052 or something so you've got to get from 10 to 52 teeth in only 12 steps and you know you can do the math on that there's what 42 teeth difference between the smallest and the largest so you're just going to have these big gaps okay so just to recap standard is 52 53 39 compact 5034 and then they came out with this thing called a mid compact now the advantage of the mid compact was it was three or is it's three teeth less on the inside chainring so 36 but it's only one tooth less on the big chainring and i'm going to go into that in just a second so for people that were like well i don't need that much climbing help to go all the way from a 39 to a 34 i only need a little assistance from my 39 so you only drop about three teeth here and then on your big chain ring you would have dropped three and depending on your tire size and depending on the gear combination in the back for each tooth you lose in a big chain ring you're losing about one mile per hour top end speed but that's just a very generalized statement okay standard compact then they came out with a mid compact now the customer is asking me well should i use should i with this 5034 that i already have and this 11 32 setup i already have i probably should have done this in different colors the 48 32 crank set is out there should i get that with my 11 32 or some people have told me i should just get in uh an 11 34 so we're going to go over that in just a minute but what does all that mean let's look down here if you want to increase your climbing capability in other words a steep hill reducing the grade of that steep hill 10 12 15 you'll want a larger main cog in the back you'll want something fairly big in the back and all of it is dependent on of course your front derailleur so if your front derailleur is a short cage or a larger cage so ss or gs that front that rear derailleur will help you get bigger cogs in the back so here's the thing if you have larger cogs here but smaller chainrings here so large cogs small chainring that is better for climbing if you're thinking about top end speed well then the bigger the chain ring is up front and the smaller this is in the back that's better for top end speed you rewind that and watch that a hundred times if it doesn't make sense to you the first time so this gentleman has a 50 34 he currently has an 11 32 so he has a 34 chain ring up front and this one back here is a 32 in the back so he's asking well should i get a 34 or should i swap out this crank set so then i have a 32 combination well the math is pretty interesting what i did was i said okay i have a gear inch calculator at 60 rpm which i think is a fairly reasonable um steep grade cadence at 60 rpm if he's got a 34 inner chain ring and a 32 right so this set up here then he's able to go about five miles an hour and of course for some people that might be a challenge to keep your balance but 60 cadence should be good enough to keep your balance if he were to switch to an 1134 cassette that miles per hour that he could attain at 60 cadence is 4.7 so that would be a little easier for him to climb this this let's say 10 15 grade whatever that grade is and but i should say if he were to switch a crank set which costs more money by the way than just like a set if we were to switch out at crank set 4832 and keep his same 32 cassette it's the same so a 4.72 mile per hour with a 34 uh cassette that he thought maybe i should just get that or should i change my crank set 44.72 it's exactly the same so either combination is going to do the same for him so he doesn't gain much um by swapping out a crankset it's much easier to just swap out a cassette okay if he did both the crank set 4832 and a 1134 cassette and so now instead of this being a 34 he now has a 32 and he gets rid of that 11 32 cassette and all he has now is a 32 chain ring and a 34 cog in the back he actually at same cadence 60 cadence he's now he can hold a speed of 4.4 miles an hour going up the hill so this is actually uh a much better improvement in his gearing to go from uh to swap out both to swap out his crank set and to swap out his chainring well what about a different option all together now during the lockdown it seemed that i was doing a lot of these uh this next option so let me show you what this next option is and then we'll talk about this one so what i was doing for people that really needed help climbing is i was swapping out the front chainrings to a 4630 so in this case his chainring that he currently has is 34. he thought of an option of 32 what about a 30 so if we switch this to a 30 and we still keep that 34 tooth cassette in the back so now he goes from an 11 30 i'm sorry a 30 chain ring with that 11 34 he can now at that same 60 cadence he's now at 4.16 well what about something else because this is probably where it matters probably more than anything else for um maybe getting a little bit more of a spin so now see remember this was 4.72 and these were both going to be the same here's the beauty of doing this type of setup now he can spin at 70 cadence and hold about 4.8 miles an hour now all of this number all these numbers are very theoretical i'm making the assumption that he has 25 tires i don't know how much help he needs climbing because i don't know if he if he has medical issues if he's overweight or i i don't know why he needs the gearing that he needs but or that he's asking for don't know if he needs them but this conversion is a lot better if you and you know graveling all that stuff this is a much better conversion than just going a little bit right you're just kind of you know from a 34 to a 32 because remember you want smaller up front to gain an advantage of climbing so from 34 to 32 that only knocks it down two teeth why not knock it down a complete four right and still get that 11 34 cassette so now your climbing setup is a 30 with a 34 in the back i think that's a much better combination now it depends also where he lives if a 46 tooth chainring is big enough for him um [Music] some people it's five o'clock it's five o'clock we gotta get out on our rev nighter most people um in different parts of the country you know if you're if you're going to spin out a 46 or i should say you might spit out spin out a 46 11 combination so 46 big chain ring 11 tooth cog you might spin that out in most places in this country and some people don't even like to go fast downhill i was working with a customer the other day 30 is his max he just doesn't like to go fast downhill so this might be a very good combination for him i hope that this makes sense but if it doesn't please make comments down below i will be happy to explain it possibly in a different way or answer your direct questions so that you can get the answer that you need uh for it to make sense to you um but anyway this is shimano drivetrain chainrings because sram's got their own um different chain ring combinations and they have a a 10-tooth cog so that complicates things but more people ride shimano than than sram so i thought i would dress it this way and phil obviously rides shimano because these are the numbers he gave me for options okay thank you so much for tuning in i appreciate your time and your attention please subscribe please it doesn't cost you anything and it means the world to me but please like and subscribe we'll see you up the road

Channel: George Vargas

Views: 55,724

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Id: C3vUmf_HZ1o

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2022