i remember a time when pushbikes only had one gear. (no gear change) the first bike i got was three gears, a few years later i went up to a five speed racer. later, i converted it to a ten speed, and my old school friend had a fifteen speed touring bike. the bike i have now is eighteen speed and i understand you can get bikes with even more gears. so what`s the limit?
2007-09-23 10:27:51 · 13 answers · asked by Anonymous in Sports ➔ Cycling
i`m not an old person, i`m in my mid forties now and was fourteen when i had my first bike. at that time, some of my friends had a one-gear type bike. i had no idea three geared bikes existed long before i was born.
2007-09-23 10:48:07 · update #1
Hmmm...some very interesting answers!
Having been a cycle technician for 20 years, I have seen the lot, from hub/deraileur combo's to, well...anything really.
I am a great fan of fewer gears, wider spaced because then you have a bicycle with gearing similar in operation to that of an articulated truck, absolutely fantastic if you tow a trailer with it, which I did for a number of years.
I once mated a three speed hub to a six speed sprocket with triple rings on the front giving a possible 54 gears. But, in practical terms, one cannot use 54 gears, as the chainring/sprocket crossover is too sharp, so a practical amount of gears was closer to 34. I must add that the set-up was totally useless in practise as there were too many cables and mechanisms getting in the way of practical operation, besides, the human body can only power a bicycle up to a certain sustainable speed for a given limit of time and I ended up going back to 18 gears, the most practical in operation terms. This gave me (with a 13-28 sprocket and triple 28-38-52 chainring) a gear spread of 27" right up to 108", just great for towing and touring long distance, ususlly both.
My current bike is a Ridgeback 501NX which cost me £400 13 years ago and it has a 7 speed hub with single ring. Not a fast bike but one of those kind you can sit in all day long and enjoy the ride. And it is in as good a condition now as it was when I bought it!
Happy cycling.
2007-09-24 07:48:07 · answer #1 · answered by Room_101 3 · 2⤊ 1⤋
The highest standard # of gears is 30 - 10x3 road bikes available at any bike shop. 27 - 9x3 on mountain bikes. Been this way for over 5 years now. Even my '95 mountain bike has 24 - 8x3. I'm about your age and 5 and 10 speeds were available when I was a pre-teen. What's the limit... Who knows?
EDIT: I didn't realize this wasn't common knowledge until I read all these replies! My 18 speed 2x9 road bike works great and don't know why anyone would think less gears would be best - the newest stuff works better than ever.
2007-09-23 11:08:00 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 2⤋
Infinity! Yes, you could get a bike with infinitely variable gear ratios. I have a bike with a 'computer designed' oval chain wheel that effectively gives a slight variation in gear ratio as the cranks rotate. This is to increase the efficiency of the pedalling action...it works too!
If you are talking about numbers of fixed gear ratios, the total number of gear ratios is the number of drive sprockets times the number of driven sprockets. So, it may be possible to make very slim chain and use thin sprockets to put say six sprockets on the crank and twelve sprockets on the back wheel. You could then theoretically have 72 fixed gear ratios, but for what purpose? The human 'engine' is slow reving with a relatively small power output. Hence the need for a large, but not excessive number of gears to transmit the small power over a wide range of road speeds.
It's an interseting question. Oval sprockets at the crank is the most ingenious and simple device I have so far used on my bike.
2007-09-23 11:41:39 · answer #3 · answered by Manannan 2 · 1⤊ 4⤋
You can get triple chain rings, 10 speed rear dérailleurs and I think 14 speed in geared hubs now. In theory they could all be combined but it have to be a fully custom job and probably rather failure prone. That would multiply out to 420 possible gears. Most I've ever actually seen was a 3x7 with a 3 speed hub for 63 gears.
2007-09-23 12:21:45 · answer #4 · answered by jman4117 2 · 0⤊ 3⤋
The most common these days is 27; A 9 speed cassette with 3 chainrings. Although it is possible to get a 10 speed cassette with 3 chainrings for 30 gears.
2007-09-23 11:27:11 · answer #5 · answered by crazydave 7 · 2⤊ 3⤋
My current bike has 27 gears. 3 on the crank x 9 at the freehub.
This is now a VERY common arrangement in most medium to high end sports & mountain bikes.
2007-09-23 10:39:54 · answer #6 · answered by creviazuk 6 · 1⤊ 3⤋
why do people want so many I am nearly 50 (did I just write that)? I have 5 gears on my old carleton (nearly as old and it still hauling my sorry ole *** around the pennines around 50 miles a spin and I dont seem to get out of top gear that much
2007-09-24 02:55:08 · answer #7 · answered by It's me :) 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Crikey! You must be old if you remember the time when bicycles had only one gear - Sturmey-Archer started manufacturing their three-gear hub in 1902! To my knowledge, the number of gears hasn't changed all that much - last night I aquired a fourty year old ten-speed, and I have an eighteen-speed which is about my age. I've heard of bicycles with twenty-four speeds, but why the hell would anyone need that many? It's simply about status.
2007-09-23 10:36:32 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 5⤋
Why should there be any limit? For practical purposes, I still think 12 is best, but in engineering terms, there is no reason why you shouldn't have 50 if you get someone to build it. The more gears you have, the more gears are useless as once the chain becomes stretched over a certain angle, the morepower is lost.
2007-09-23 10:37:07 · answer #9 · answered by mustardcharlie 3 · 1⤊ 5⤋
generally 24 gears is the most gears used.
2007-09-23 10:30:38 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 4⤋