How A Montain Bike Works
Monday, November 16th, 2009It is extremely exciting to travel riding on a montain bike. Today, some bikes have as many as 27 gear ratios. Mountain bikes use a combination of three different-sized sprockets in front and nine in back to produce these gear ratios.
That bike had two sprockets up front and five on the back. In all likelihood, the shifters were a pair of levers connected to your bike frame near the handlebars. As time went on the shifters moved to the handlebars themselves and then became advanced-looking dials right beside the grips.
To make riding faster and easier, of course. The idea behind having all of these gears is to allow the rider to crank the pedals at a constant pace (cadence) no matter what kind of slope the bike is on. You can understand this idea by imagining a bike with just one gear.
On this one-gear bike, each time you rotate the pedals one turn, the rear wheel would rotate one turn as well (a 1:1 gear ratio). If the rear wheel is 26 inches in diameter (66 cm), then with 1:1 gearing, one revolution of the pedals would cause the wheel to cover 26 * 3.14 = 81.6 inches (207 cm) of ground. If you are pedaling at a cadence of 50 RPM, that means that the bike can cover 81.6 * 50 = 4,080 inches (340 feet) (103 m) of ground per minute. That is only 3.8 MPH (6.2 KPH), which is about walking speed. That’s great for climbing a steep hill, but bad for level ground or downhill stretches. To go faster, you need a different ratio.
A bike with a large amount of gears will give you an enormous number of increments between an eleven gear ratio and a 6.5:1 gear proportion so you can always pedal at fifty R.p.m , irrespective of how fast you are actually going. On a normal twenty-seven speed trail bicycle, six of the gear proportions are so close to one another that you can not notice any difference between them. With exact use, cyclists have a tendency to select a front sprocket OK for the slope they’re riding on and stick with it, though the front sprocket can be tough to shift under heavy load. It’s way easier to shit between the gears on the rear.
The next key component for your mountain bikes gears is the derailleur, or derailer. The derailleur is what moves the bicycle chain from gear to gear. A typical shifting system employs both a front and rear derailleur. Without the derailleur you wouldn’t be able to shift gears. The derailleur consists of pulleys and the cage, which is the part which actually comes into contact with the chain. The pulleys are attached to the gear cables. There are separate cables for the front and rear derailleurs. The gear cables connect to the gear shifters.