On 12/29/2020 8:48 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 9:04:36 p.m. UTC-5, wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 6:37:07 PM UTC-5, wrote:


Any comments about the increasing numbers of speeds, any advantage of them and if Shimano should take advantage to make a "forever" group that would shift any number of speeds, self adjusting to the spacing and width of the cogsets?
For non-racers, the important thing is not the number of speeds. It's having a sufficient range
for one's riding, which mostly means a sufficiently low gear. It's extremely rare to find a bike
without a sufficiently high gear. These days many, many bikes come with a high gear that's
practically useless. As Jobst pointed out many times, people now pedal downgrades in gears
so high it would be faster to coast. Anything over 100 gear inches is probably just a vanity
ornament. Anything over 110 certainly is. (We don't even have that on our tandem.)

Between 100 gear inches (52-14) and whatever low gear you feel you need, how much fine
tuning is really necessary? It's well known that power output vs. cadence is essentially flat
over a wide range; so the fine tuning is just personal preference. I suspect that over the
decades, many cyclists have gotten a "princess and pea" mentality regarding that.
They've been trained to perceive and dislike slight differences from their ideal cadence, even
though it really makes no difference.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy with a 10% difference between adjacent gears. You can
get that with five cogs and a half step front setup, although it requires double shifting
more often than many would like. So, you can get the same single shifting 8 cogs. Two
chainrings with that can give you plenty of range unless you're doing loaded touring or
pedaling a tandem or recumbent. For those cases, use a triple.

About a "forever" group, I can't say why Shimano would ever do that. It's not in their
best interests, even if it would work better for many riders.

- Frank Krygowski

I like my 9-cog cassettes. I can set them up with a fairly close 7-cogs spread and then have two nice bailout cogs left over.

I've had many times when a slight variation in incline would mean a gear change that to the next lower gear was too low yet the gear I was in was too high for sustained use. Due to that, a few years back I bought two Sun Race 9-cogs cassettes and took them apart and then reassembled on as a corncob 11-19 teeth cogset for my dropbar MTB with 1.5" slick tires. I absolutely love that cogset for a lot of my really long days in the saddle. Each gear shift is just enough lower to be comfortable but without fear of spinning out or pedaling a too high a cadence.

Others needs/wants vary and what works for me may not work for them.

I don't think that Shimano or any other component manufacturer will ever make a Universal shifter as that would cut into sales of the Latest and greatest gearsets and relater shifting mechanism. The closest we ever will come to a universal gear shifter would be a return to friction shifters.

I laugh at some of the changes in bicycle components. They kept adding rear cogs until the chainstays got pretty wide and interfered with the pedal strokes of riders with larger feet. Then, suddenly, one chainring setups became the rage pushed by component makers. After a few more years of those I'll expect that the latest/greatest thing being introduced on new bikes will be a double chainring set.

Cheers


Wide chainstays? Some yes, but not inherently. Road bike
wheels with 8-9-10-11-12 formats have been universally 130mm
for 32 years. In 'bicycle product cycle years' that's
forever and a day.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971