Can you help a newster understand chainwheels and cassette numbers please?

My Marin Stinson has 48-38-28 chainwheels and 14-28 rear cassette with 7 speeds.

What do these numbers actually mean, at the simplest level? How do they relate to how a bike feels and handles, for hills/speed etc? If I was curious about a bike with better hill climbing over short steep sections then what numbers would I need to be looking at (or do I just need to pedal harder?)

Please feel free to link me up to anything that will help ;) Sheldon is a little beyond my current understanding however :o. Thank you.

I'll give it a shot. The various combinations that you can achieve between you chainrings in the front and the cogs in the rear (your cassette) are your gears. It sounds like you have seven cogs, so you have a total of 21 gears (3 chainrings by 7 cogs).

The bigger the chainring and the smaller the cogs, the harder (or bigger) the gear. So, your hardest gear is a 48 by 14. You will use your biggest gears for downhills and flat sections when there's a tailwind or you're sprinting.

Conversely, the smaller the chainring and the bigger the cog, the easier (or smaller) the gear. So, your easiest gear is a 28 by 28. You will use your smallest gears to climb.

Obviously, you have some gears in between the extremes. These will be the gears you will likely use the most. When I used a triple, I hung out in my middle ring most of the time.

As for better climbing gears, you could achieve that my changing out your cassette to one with a "wider spread," but I'm afraid you'd have to change a few other things to accommodate it, making it a rather costly proposition.

I'd suggest, instead, that you just work on fitness and technique. When you first start riding, steep hills will likely be one of your biggest challenges. I know it was for me. It takes time to develop the fitness and strength needed to get up them. If you do a search for climbing or hills on TE, you'll find some fairly recent threads that offer some good tips. The reality is that in the meantime, you may find yourslef walking the occasional hill. Don't worry about it; it's happened to most of us at one time or another.

Thank you for such a detailed reply. I shall read it in detail later when I have a quieter child. Much appreciated!

The chainrings are attached to your cranks, which are attached to your feet.

The cassette and its cogs are attached to the rear wheel.

However many links of the chain you pull with your cranks, the same number of links have to turn around the rear cog, since it's a loop. So for every rotation of your cranks (feet), the rear wheel turns the number of front teeth DIVIDED BY the number of rear teeth.

Let's say you have a single-speed bike with a 42 tooth chainring and a 21 tooth rear cog. For every rotation of your cranks (feet), you advance the chain 42 links. The chain must then also advance 42 links all the way around, which means it pulls the 21-tooth rear cog - and the attached rear wheel - TWO revolutions (42/21).

Derailleurs just let you change the number of teeth you're pulling front and rear. Obviously it's not always a nice round number, but it makes it easy to illustrate. Let's magically put a cassette and a rear derailleur on your imaginary bike now, but leave the same 42-tooth front. Shift into your 14-tooth rear cog. Now, for every revolution of your feet, your rear wheel travels THREE revolutions (42/14). This is a taller gear, because for every revolution of your legs, you're now pushing the bike half again as far as you were in the 21-tooth cog.

So when you shift to a taller gear, one of two things happens - either you keep the same cadence and start going faster (either with a greater effort over the same terrain, or with the same effort because you've started down a hill or gotten a tailwind); or you keep the same speed, but your cadence drops, because it takes fewer revolutions of your feet to go the same distance.

The reverse happens if you shift to a shorter (lower) gear.

That help?

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf

That help?

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Yes! Thank you so much. I'm going to do some gear maths tonight. I'd naively assumed that one turn of the pedals equalled one turn of the wheels and didn't really get what the gears actually did. Presumably it gets even more interesting when you start considering power too.

hmmmmm.

Indy, I seem to use my middle ring most of the time, but I have to switch to the smallest one for steeper hills and even then I haven't always made it. I think practice will help, but if I continue loving these offroad routes I may well start investigating a better tool for the job. All those numbers make a lot more sense now, thank you both for replying in such detail. I may well come back with some further questions :D

What really helps to understand the gears: turn your bike upside down (or better, put it in a stand if you have one). Watch what happens to each cog and the wheel as you turn the pedal. Get someone to help you shift it into another gear (you don't need help if you have it in a stand--your toddler can help turn the pedals while you do the shifting if you have it upside down), and see what happens. Turn the pedals yourself in each gear, you'll see how it's hard to turn the pedals when it's a high gear ratio and easier when it is a low gear ratio.

I'll try that today, Melalvai, thank you. It's another grey wet day so that will be perfect.

So the gears at the front don't mean anything until you look at the ones at the back too... that makes a lot more sense now!