BILL BOSTON CYCLES
BILL BOSTON CYCLES
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Gear ChartsEver wondered what those gearing numbers mean? Just in case you don’t know, they were left over from the transition from “Ordinary” or “High Wheel” bikes. The idea was to allow you to compare the gearing on your “safety” bikes with the equivalent wheel size of your other bikes. While this was probably a good idea 100 years ago, but how many of us have a "High Wheeler" in our garage. There is clearly a need for a better system. It seems that all of the metric countries have been using another system for quite some time. They use a gear chart that gives the meters traveled in one revolution of the cranks. Back in 1977, before PC’s, my friend Drew Knox and I were discussing this problem and decided that if I would do the math, he would do the word processing and we would produce a gear chart based on gear feet similar to the metric gear charts. This chart gave the distance (in feet) traveled in one complete revolution of the cranks and had the added benefit of providing miles per at a cadence of 88 RPM’s. Both of these things are things that we can relate to. Below are two spreadsheets. One has a complete development for all gears using the gear feet system. The other is a small spreadsheet that you can use to create a custom gear chart for your bike. You can print it, cut it out and tape it to your stem if you like. Insert numbers corresponding to your For 700C WheelsGEAR FEET = distance traveled in feet with one revolution of the cranks and speed in mph at 88 crank RPM's. |
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Copyright © 2003 BILL BOSTON CYCLES
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