It is reference to classic Dead Kennedys album. I am not looking for death if I don’t get reasonable gear ratios.
Current pandemic made me ride daily and I was starting to think maybe I should support Finnish bike stores by getting new bike. Not only because of this pandemic. I have considered upgrading my cyclocross bike for a while now. Might have done it this summer in any case. I want disc brakes and wider tires. More gears wouldn’t hurt either. This is where we get to this post’s topic.
I checked cyclocross and gravel bikes. Current flavor of the month seems to be them having mountain biking gear ratios. Having 11-36t gearing on back seem to be the standard. It would be good on cross-country riding but on everything else bike wouldn’t be too good for that sort of riding. If you have something like fatbike you don’t want to use gravel or cyclocross bike on cross-country style of riding.
If you mostly ride on something that can be called road or easy trails you want gearing where jump between gears is one teeth rather than two teeth which is mountain bike gearing. I rather have 11-28t gearing. Mountain biking gearing is big reason why I don’t like riding fatbike on road. Bigger tires and worse aerodynamics play part too. But it is hard to find good gear sometimes when jump between gears is so big. On cross-country you want that but on roads gradients and surfaces don’t change so much that you need to make huge gear ratio changes all the time. It is more of getting optimal gear for current situation.
Other part of gear ratios is front chainrings. By default front chainrings are something meant for racing. I watched video which preferred gravel bikes over cyclocross bikes because gravel bikes had gears to go over 60 km/h when cyclocross bikes have gears for top speeds of 45-50 km/h. Like anyone who isn’t racing would need gears for that sort of speeds. Two by bikes seem to have bigger chainring of 46t. One by bikes have chainring 42t. I calculated gear ratios. Bigger chainring of 42t would give good gear ratios. When it is only chainring you have to have mountain biking gearing on back to make bike to handle all sorts of terrains and gradients. But if you had smaller chainring of 30t you get everything you need with 11-28t gearing and you get one teeth jumps between most gears.
I couldn’t find gravel or cyclocross bikes with 42/30t on front and 11-28t on back. 46/36t or 46/30t on front and 11-36t on back are more common. I understand 46t on front is good for races but not everyone of us races. 42t on front would give rest of us more reasonable gear ratios. My current cyclocross bike has 46/36t. I haven’t used biggest gears it has and smallest gears are not small enough on some cases. 42/30t would be more useful. I don’t know if it possible to get that without custom components. Haven’t seen that anywhere.