Mountain Bike Gear Numbers Explained

The marketing department likes to multiply the number of cogs by the number of chainrings because big numbers are impressive. You can think of gears as the same thing as speeds a bike with 18 gears is an 18 speed bike. Even the wheel size of your bike will affect your gear set up.

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Mountain Bike Gear Shifting System Components With Images

Mountain Bike Gear Shifting System Components Mountain Biking

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Bike gears explained.

Mountain bike gear numbers explained. Shifting explained for. Studying the numbers and even testing a few. It s also now the norm to see most mountain bikes and many gravel bikes equipped with a. First gear is a low gear.

Gear systems and ranges have evolved over the years to reflect how we ride and the changes in. A comfortable pedal power on a 26 wheeled bike will feel considerably easier than the same gear ratio on a 29er. A bike with 30 or more gears is not an indication of a machine designed to break the land speed record any more than a bike with only a single gear. On the left shifter you will see numbers to indicate which gear you are in 1 2 or 3.

This video simplifies all the terms and explains how your gears impact your riding. Teeth bike gear ratios explained. So if both the gear indicators show 1 then you are in the easiest gear the bike offers. Bikes generally have 1 3 18 21 24 or 27 speeds.

If the left shifter is at 3 and the right is at 8 then you are in the hardest gear on the bike. Cycling gearing can be confusing. Mountain bike chainsets tend to use even smaller chainrings to deal with steep and off road terrain. 10 and 15 speeds are obsolete and you don t see them on new bikes anymore lower numbers are the low gears and higher numbers are the high gears.

But the fact is there s actually a lot of overlap so a 9 2 doesn t really have 18 gears. Mountain bike drivetrain components explained. So in the example above with a 2 1 gear ratio one full rotation of the pedals will result in 2 full revolutions of the wheels.