When I started riding ss/fixed 30 years ago, I, as one would expect, erred on the side of low gearing, thinking of hills. IIRC, for my first experiment with ss I chose a 63” gear. All this for pavement riding.
I very quickly learned that twiddling too low a gear on tailwind flats or downhill is at least as annoying as pushing too high a gear uphill. I progressed to 65” and to 67”, and I rode a 67’ gear for a number of years in all conditions. But for reasons I can’t now recall, I began to find sub-70” too low, so up it went to 70” and higher for commuting and loaded errands, and 75” for my light gofast. I found that pushing a slightly higher gear uphill is less tiresome than twiddling a slightly too low gear on flats or downhill. Presently, my loaded errand bike has a fixed 72”cruising gear, a 65” headwind and long, shallow incline gear, and a 54” hill gear. SA ASC hub. My much lighter gofast has a 75” cruising gear with a 17/19 Dingle with 67” low gear. Again, all fixed. My impression from all of this is that a good all-round fixed gear is in the range of 67” to 75”, depending on terrain and rider strength and pedaling style. Note that the old Raleigh rod-braked roadsters were geared surprisingly high, ~92”, 72”, 54”. (That 92” gear is very puzzling; I always regeared my AW roadsters to ~54” direct, 72” cruising overdrivehigh, and 41” underdrive/low. Point, at least as it was in my case, is that you very quickly develop the ability to climb in gears much higher than you’d imagine if limited to multispeed freewheel drivetrains. You also quickly discover the annoyance of descending or flailing along the flats in gears that are too low. Worst case: 175 cranks and 60” fixed gear on ss mountain bike. Uphills were fine, downhills and tailwind flats were purgatory. *That* lasted about a week until I converted it to 170s, freewheel, and a 65” gear. As always, YMMV. On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 8:40 PM Brent Eastman <[email protected]> wrote: > I am toying with the idea of making one of my bikes a SS. I fount an > eccentric eno hub for a great deal and thus I will be on the hunt for a > freewheel soon. I'd rather be able to climb a hill than pedal down one. I'm > decently strong. I don't pay attention much at all to what gear I'm in on > my 3x9 bikes, but I could start. > > What gear ratios do y'all run, or tried, and why? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/6e8347fa-a7e4-49f9-9f5d-7208b1689285n%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/6e8347fa-a7e4-49f9-9f5d-7208b1689285n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Patrick Moore Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Executive resumes, LinkedIn profiles, bios, letters, and other writing services ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *When thou didst not, savage, k**now thine own meaning,* *But wouldst gabble like a** thing most brutish,* *I endowed thy purposes w**ith words that made them known.* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgufgNhmC_C_TGxF_civzAy%3D6LprmHgeFtCrakhtZq3%3Dxg%40mail.gmail.com.
