Skip to main content

Bicycle Tech

Hey! I have two bicycles. This post is about my first one: A 1985 ST400 touring bike by Cannondale. My other is a 2012 Cannondale, but this post is not about that one.

My crank length is 172.5mm, the tire is a 27 x 1 1/4" (32-630), and my chainring is 50/45. The freewheel gears are 13/16/19/23/28/34. The weight of the bike is 24 lbs. Components are all Shimano 600.

I'm generally on the small ring, second-smallest freewheel ring. That means for me to maintain 20mph, I have to do 87 rpm's. If I kept it on the same freewheel ring and just put the chainring on the 50 tooth one, I could maintain 20mph with a cadence of 78.

Using my present bike:
Goal:
22mph - 45/13 @ 78 rpm
50/16 @ 86
23mph - 50/16 @ 90
45/13 @ 81
24mph - 45/13 @ 85
50/13 @ 76
25mph - 45/13 @ 88
50/13 @ 79
26mph - 45/13 @ 92
50/13 @ 83
27mph - 50/13 @ 86
28mph - 50/13 @ 89
29mph - 50/13 @ 92
30mph - 50/13 @ 95 (hi)

Quickly obvious from the chart above is that my ideal gear for 22 mph is either 50/16 or 45/13. Also obvious is that for anything higher than 23 mph that the big has to be used up front with the smallest freewheel in back.

My method of execution suggests I should just keep the chain ring on the 50 gear and the freewheel ring on the 16 and work on cadence. If I'm going 78 my cadence is too slow anyway. So, if I work on the 50/16 cadence at 80+, I can stay there in a wide window until my cadence hits about 90 rpm. At that point (or going downhill), I can switch the freewheel gear to the 13. At 90 rpm on the 50/16 I'll be going 23 mph, so I've got a good year of riding until I should think about the 50/13. Once I do, I'll have to make sure my cadence starts at a minimum of 79 rpm. This will get me to 25 mph.

Note:
At 17-19 mph, my best gear is 50/19.
At 20-22 mph, my best gear is 50/16.
At 23-25 mph, my best gear is 45/13.
Anything over 25 has to be 50/13, though.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Eve Online - Faction Warfare Missioning

Basics: Gain ISK and LP by completing and turning in missions. Missions are against npc's (non-player "rats"). They generally involve destroying an object (like a reactor), or a head honcho rat (like a Sector Commander). With ISK you can purchase whatever you need off the Eve markets. LP you use to purchase items in your corporations Loyalty Points Store (LP = Loyalty Points). How lucrative is mission running? It depends on the tier the faction is at in the warzone. If you complete 20 missions, you should on average at Tier 3 get a payout of about 40 million ISK and 450K-550K LP. At about 700 ISK/LP that translates to about 350 mil. ISK. At Tier 4, those same missions completed should pay out 650k-850k LP. This would translate to about 550 mil. ISK. What do I use to run missions? Current doctrine suggests that if you're Amarr fighting against Minmatar, the best ship to use on Level 3 and 4 missions is a Stealth Bomber called the Hound . You can stay at range...

Stone and Rain

Commentary: Summer 2006 Let me cast a picture and invite you in... Close your eyes and I'll describe what you see. Keep your eyes closed. If you were to open your eyes you would see hills and valleys, green with eagerness and youth, obscured at random with misted veils or small stoned pathways, winding at random like streams and brooks. Tiny arched wooden bridges punctuate here or there... but before you is a pond that a good stone can be thrown across, it is so small. The water is shallow, and clear, and cool to the touch. The bottom is of tiny smooth stones. In the middle is a large flat round stone, carved by man, reached by a curved path of flat round white stones spaced so that a single step is taken on each to the shore. You kneel on the edge of this flat stone, and if you opened your eyes and looked into the water below, you would see small orange fish with large wavy fins gracefully and slowly gliding this way and that, waving their fins proudly like flags. Keep you...

Eve Online: FW - Why Choose 60 Squadron?

If you're a newbro Faction Warfare can be overwhelming. You came for various reasons from meeting up with and hanging around a bunch of guys (or gals) and make some friends, to get into some pvp action, or find a means of making ISK. The more you learn about Eve the more you find how expansive the environment is. What we can do for you What is your primary reason for joining Faction Warfare? If it's to get into fights, there's always pvp opportunities and small roaming fleets available. If it's to learn fleet operations, several times a week small and medium-sized fleets are organizing. Our fleets tend to be either frigates or destroyers as they are cheap and you'll lose a lot of them, but in the meantime you'll get into a lot of fights and in so doing will learn and become better at pvp and fleet ops. We sometimes venture into wormholes and at other times we may venture into high-sec for ops there. Primarily, our focus is on the Ammar/Minmatar warzone. Th...