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by osaka.synaesthesia

The gears in mountain bicycles just keep getting more and more complex. The bikes of today have as many as twenty-seven gear proportions. An off-road bike will utilise a
Aggregate of three different sized sprockets in front and nine in the back to produce gear proportions.  

The concept behind all of these gears is to permit the rider to crank the pedals at a continuous pace no matter what sort of slope the bike is on. You can understand this better by picturing a bike with simply a single gear. Every time you rotate the pedals one turn, the rear wheel would rotate one turn as well ( eleven gear proportion ).

If the rear wheel is twenty-six inches in diameter, then with 11 gearing, one full twist on the pedals would lead to the wheel covering 81.6 inches of ground. If you’re pedaling at a speed of 50 R.p.m, this suggests that the bike can cover over 340 feet of ground per minute. This is only 3.8 Miles per hour, which is the equivalence of walking speed. This is excellent for climbing a steep hill, although bad for ground or going downhill.

To go quicker you will need a different proportion. To ride downhill at 25 Miles per hour with a fifty Revs per minute cadence at the pedals, you’ll require a 5.6:1 gear proportion. A bike with plenty of gears will give you a large number of increments between an eleven gear proportion and a 6.5:1 gear proportion so that you can always pedal at fifty R.p.m, no matter how fast you’re really going.

On an ordinary twenty-seven speed mountain bike, 6 of the gear proportions are so close to each other that you can not notice any difference between them.

With actual use, bike riders have a tendency to choose a front sprocket acceptable for the slope they’re riding on and keep it going, although the front sprocket can be difficult to shift under heavy load. It’s way easier to shit between the gears on the rear.

If you’re cranking up a hill, it’s best to choose the tiniest sprocket on the front then shift between the 9 gears available on the rear. The more speeds you have on the back sprocket, the larger advantage you will have.

All in all, gears are critical to mountain bikes as they dictate your total speed. Without gears you would not be well placed to build speed nor would you be in a position to pound pedals. The gears will move the pedals and help you build up speed.

There are all sorts of gears available in mountain bikes, all of which will help you build up a lot of momentum if you use them the right way.

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