Learning the Nuts & Bolts

WAGGZ said:

This is not completely about maintenance. Is there a thread that amounts to Cycling 101 (so I don't have to buy Cycling for Dummies). For example, I see post about cranksets or cassettes. I'm guessing the numbers that follow are the numbers of teeth. But what do accomplish with a higher or lower number. A lot of times when I reading on here it seems like Greek. Didn't think it would be a good idea to post "What does that mean?" on every thread.

A great resource for learning the terminology, bits, and pieces of bikes is Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info page. There's a lot there. Let your fingers wander the links found on each page.

A great resource for learning your way around wrenching and maintaining a bike is Park Tool's Repair site, on which Park Tool provides instructions for virtually anything mechanical you need to do with a bike.

As for your question regarding gears and numbers. A typical gear statement takes the form of 53x12 or summat. The first number is the number of teeth on the chainring in use (the gear in front), while the second number is the number of teeth on the cog (gear in back) in use. Chainrings are often specified using terminology like this, 53/39, where the 53 is the big chainring and the 39 is the small. For cassettes (gears in back) specification is usually done like this, 12-27, where 12 is the number of teeth on the small cog and 27 the teeth on the big cog.

What does it all mean? Smaller chainrings, i.e. those with fewer teeth, are easier to pedal, make going up hill easier. Conversely, smaller cogs result in a gear that's more difficult to push. If you divide the number of teeth on the chainring by the number of teeth on the cog, you get a gear ratio, which allows you to compare one combination of chainring/cog to another. Lower gear ratios are easier to pedal whereas higher gear ratios are bit more difficult.

alienator said:

Lower gear ratios are easier to pedal whereas higher gear ratios are bit more difficult.

To the op.... another way to say this is that the gear ratio is the number of revolutions that the rear wheel makes for each revolution of the pedals.

A gear ratio of 3.53:1 (53x17 gear combination) means that for every time the pedals go 'round, the rear wheel makes 3.53 revolutions.

I think a thread that teaches everyone everything they need to know would be more like a "book." The value of discussion forums is that people can ask very specific questions which couldn't be covered in a more general format. If you have a specific question then you'll get some good answers here, but for general questions you're probably better to just google it.

alienator said:

A great resource for learning the terminology, bits, and pieces of bikes is Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info page. There's a lot there. Let your fingers wander the links found on each page.

A great resource for learning your way around wrenching and maintaining a bike is Park Tool's Repair site, on which Park Tool provides instructions for virtually anything mechanical you need to do with a bike.

Sheldon Brown's page is the cycling equivalent of the bible for christians. Excellent site.