On Sat, 2012-08-25 at 14:05 -0700, Michael Hechmer wrote: > Seven speed can be a good solution for a friction triple. I commuted > on a 7 sped freewheel for many years and it worked fine for me. But 7 > spd cassettes are rare, generally of lower quality and often have very > big jumps between cog sizes. I like the availability of 12-27 & > 11-28 9 speed cassettes, which allows me to drop the size of the big > ring. A 13/52, 12/48, and 11/44 all provide the same hi gear; but the > options for a lower gear, with a good shifting pattern increase > dramatically.
Trade-offs, and individual preferences. All those provide a high gear that for me is uselessly high. For me, 52x14, 48x13, 44x12 are all the top gear I need, except for a tandem. I've got 20/32/44 x 12-27 on one bike, and I wouldn't go there again in future. For me, aside from improved friction shifting, a big advantage of 7 speed is the availability of 14-32, 13-30 and 13-34 cassettes. 14-32 x 39/53 is amazingly nice on a 650B city bike or commuter. > My Rambouillet (do the French seem to use up a lot of the worlds > supply of vowels or what!) has a 44/30 and an 11/28. The hi gear > launches me and the low gear equals a racing triple, enough for me to > sustain 8% climbs and manage 10% ramps without too much difficulty. > If I know I will need to sustain 10% or more than I need lower gears, > which means going to a triple. With 7 speed I get wider steps and > different steps which may be just as important to me. This is not the > end of cycling joy by any means, but everything is a tradeoff. > I do have a fear that 9 speed could suffer the same commercial fate as > 7 & 8 speed. I'm hoarding cassettes, and always buy an extra smallest > cog, since that seems to be what wears out first. The "commercial fate" of 7 speed is the chrome cassettes are now unavailable, but the black ones are all still available. Not so pretty, but functionally just as good. That's not the case with 8: in the past 2 or 3 years virtually all the 8 speed combinations have gone. Only 11-x are still in available, and for me 11 only makes sense if you have a 20" wheel. I find it amazing that you wear out 11T sprockets. I have 13T sprockets I've been using (on 12-27 --> 13-30 9 speed conversions) that I've been using since 2005 that are still fine. I'm amazed your 11s get any wear at all, since (as already noted) 11 x anything is so high as to be absolutely useless on anything but a small-wheeler. You aren't spending a lot of time in the 11x30, are you? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
