HOW DO BIKE GEARS WORK?! | BIKOTIC

Hello everyone and welcome to this new Bicotic video. How do bicycle

gears

work

? In this video I'm going to try to demystify and simplify what these

gears

do and how to use them. Disclaimer, I am not a scientist, I am not an Engineer and I am not a mathematician, everything in this video is based on my own experience of many years riding bicycles, including many years without having a clue what was going on with the gears, so here we go, in the beginning there was a lot. of guys who decided that running really wasn't good for their fancy suits, so they invented a contraption where you could sit while you ran, that was all well and good, but then some bright spark thought better than to wait a minute instead of running, which which is a bit of a nightmare, what we could do is put some pedals on the front of the

bike

and that's it, so this is cool and all, but this comes with a bigger problem, imagine this black circle is a wheel and This here is cranks with pedals, effectively our crank is locked to the steering wheel and one revolution of the pedal doesn't really take us very far down the road; in fact, from one revolution of the pedal we travel the circumference of the wheel, if that makes sense now, the problem with that is that you end up pedaling very fast and you don't really go very far, so that's a bit of a problem and we solved that problem on this penny, so what we did there was we made the circumference of the wheel much larger basically the length of your inside your leg and with the larger circumference of the wheel, it meant that every time you turned the pedals we went further on the road so you can go faster and not look like a kid on a tricycle, now that big wheel is nice and all, but that causes another problem, uh, as soon as you increase that speed that we've all been craving, especially downhill, if you hit a pothole or a curb or something, bingo, you're in a little trouble and they used to call it taking a header and it was generally fatal, great, pennies weren't around for long because they were incredibly dangerous, the

bike

safety was called a safety bicycle because between this and the penny there was some chance of When you came home for dinner you didn't sit on a gigantic front wheel, as you can see, the safety bicycle is not that far from what we use today.

The genius of the safety bike is that we have now separated the wheel and the crank no longer. one turn of the pedals has to equal one turn of the steering wheel and now we can manipulate how fast the steering wheel turns each time you pedal and we do it with a chain and some gears, so like I said, I'm not a mathematician. Hopefully some of these numbers are correct. You can see that by separating the crank from the drive wheel we can manipulate the relationship between the front sprocket and the rear sprocket, so if the front sprocket is larger than the rear sprocket, in this case it has 52 teeth. versus an 11 tooth and then you put the chain on that locks the gears together and it means that when the crank turns one time because the rear gear is smaller, the rear wheel will actually turn 4.7 times so you can see that there and what that means.

It is because we travel the circumference of the wheel every time the wheel turns completely if we take that circumference and in this case let's imagine that this is a 700c wheel, it rotates 4.7 times, we travel 9.17 meters, so with a nice wheel and small we have managed to manipulate the number of times it turns and travels a good distance and this is the beauty of using a chain and gears to convert leg power into forward motion, so with all that in mind, what now We can see that there are gears of different sizes. It's going to have a different effect on how many times the rear wheel turns when you turn the pedals and what's really important to understand is that it's the ratio between the gears that changes, so here we have two identical gears, that ratio goes To be. be one to one and these larger gears here still have a one to one ratio, so if you were to use these two setups on a bike, that's effectively the same because in one to one, one turn of the cranks will turn the part. rear.

It rolls once, so both gear ratios here are effectively the same as the setup we had on the dime. Now it's one to one if you put a big gear in the front like we did in the animation just now and a small gear in the back. That will make it harder to pedal because you are turning the rear wheel more times. In the example we had, it was 4.7 times. You're going to turn the rear wheel with one revolution of the pedal, so you're effectively moving your weight and the weight of the bike combines 4.7 times the circumference of the rear wheel, so it's going to be quite difficult because you're going to moving that weight quite a bit, unlike what happens if you put that small gear in the front and put a big one in the back it will have the opposite effect and you will actually turn the pedals 4.7 times to turn only the rear wheel one Maybe now if you are going up a very steep hill on a mountain bike, that will be great because the pedals will feel very light with each turn of the rear wheel, so it will actually be much easier, so this is where We are at a crossroads, what we have is a beautiful, simple, elegant and effective way to convert the strength of your legs into forward movement and we have a very effective and economical personal transportation device and to this day this bike A single speed is used around the world in many different applications such as bicycle racing or velodrome racing to name a few. and in many ways I wish that was the end of the story, but we have a major problem with this system and that is with a gear, if the road starts to go up or down, you will find that your gear is not the right one.

It will quickly become too difficult or too easy and you will wish you had more gears and that, my friends, was where the big hairy monster was born. How about putting more than one gear on our bikes? I mean, it's a great idea, right? We've established that by having a different size sprocket at the front and a different size sprocket at the rear, we can manipulate the gearing of the bike, so the obvious next step is that if we have teeth of various sizes, we can choose the appropriate gear for the road we are traveling on is a brilliant idea, the only problem with this idea is how do we make the chain move to the front and rear sprocket to create the appropriate ratio for the road we are traveling on We are traveling at that time. time, so this is what the brainiacs came up with: two small devices on your bike that you can control to select the most appropriate gear ratio for the road you are traveling on and the basic function of each of these devices is to derail the chain. from one sprocket to another and you guessed it, they are called derailleurs and we use the French word or if you prefer you can call them front mechanism and rear mechanism now these photos here are of my bicycle and the first thing that confuses a lot of people, the front mechanism and the rear mechanism look very different even though they have very similar jobs to derail the chain from one gear to another, now the big difference is that the rear mechanism has a second job which is to keep the chain taut while we select different sized gears so as you can imagine going down to a smaller gear you won't need as much chain so this device has a spring on it and we will loosen the chain as we go down to a smaller gear. gear, so the front neck doesn't need to do that, so it clearly looks very different on this particular bike.

You can see that the mechanisms are controlled by these cables that run from the front of the bike to the handlebars so that I can change gears well, so with this system everything is very good, but we have added some complications in the next section. I'll try to break it down and show how we use all these lovely gears, but the first thing I should point out is you're not stupid like I say, it's quite complicated, it takes a while to understand and sometimes when you ask people for advice they can make you feel a little silly if they find someone else to explain it to you.

So on my bike we just looked at, I have a front mechanical shifter and a rear mechanical shifter on the handlebars. Now there are cases where this will be different if you are riding a fairly modern mountain bike. I don't actually have a front mic shifter, so obviously you won't have a front mic shifter. I'm a Shimano guy now, that's what I've used the most now. I obviously live in the UK so unlike the rest of the world we tend to have our front brake on the right and our rear brake on the left, I have no idea why we have it the other way around for everyone else but that immediately creates some confusion because on the right shifter you are controlling the front brake, but at the same time you control the rear mechanism and then on the left shifter you control the rear brake but the front mechanism, so that's a bit silly.

The other thing that is confusing is that when we control the rear mech we push the lever to the left to make it easier and then we click this paddle to make it harder with the front mech, however we push the brake lever to the left. right to make it harder and then we click on the palette to make it easier, yeah, that's confusing, right? That's right, you just have to get used to it, so here's something I want to clarify and this will probably come down to personal preference, but there are quite a few different ways to describe the team you're on. high gear big gear faster gear low gear small gear slower gear personally I prefer to use the words hard harder or easy easier because for me those words relate to how it really feels so let's take an example if you are a 75 cyclist kilos with 10 kilos of equipment and bike and you put it in a large gear in the front and a small one in the back.

Let's imagine that every time you turn the pedals you are moving that weight so far that, in my opinion, it will feel difficult. I'm going to think of it as a hard march, however if we change that round, you'll only move that way so far, so it will feel easier and it will be an easy march, that's how I see it in my head, I like to use words that actually sound like they feel good, let's talk about what is possibly the most important thing when it comes to gears on a bike and something I hope you can learn from this video is when to actually change gears and The rule here is to anticipate what's coming and preemptively get into a gear that

work

s well for that stretch of road, so when you're first starting out this can be quite tricky, especially since you're still trying to figure out which lever of changes does what and which. way to click on it, but it's like driving a car;

Eventually you'll do it without even thinking and then you can start thinking about when to shift gears yourself. I'm always looking down the road and trying to anticipate which gear will work well for. the slope I'm on, so as I gradually go up a steeper and steeper hill, I'll gradually click through the gear range I'm on, making it easier, at no point do you want to find yourself in a really difficult gear and then suddenly Suddenly you need to be in a really easy gear because that's when the problems start, you lose momentum, it's not very efficient and it puts a lot of pressure on the mechanism.

Likewise, when you get to the top of the hill and start down the other side, it's still a good option. The idea of ​​matching your gear to the slope of the road or track you're driving on if you're going down a hill in two gears lower and then start pedaling not only seems ridiculous but you'll also feel really bad. When you start turning at 200 rpm you are always thinking and anticipating which gear to go into, one of the most important places to think is when you stop, so if we come to a T junction the worst thing you can do here is stopping at the T-junction in a very hard gear, you may be turning right and have to cross traffic and if you are in a very hard gear you will find yourself stuck in the middle of the road trying to pass a gear very big and that's dangerous with oncoming cars so when you stop make sure you put it in a proper and easy gear that you can start with ease and ease another little tip here when you're. shifting gears is smooth, gears and derailleurs have been around for a long time and have gotten better and better over the years, but it's still a bit of a trick and actually derailing a chain between teeth is a bit tricky, so that, if you happen to change gears and again, this is something you have to practice, just reduce the power a little when you feel the chain go to the next sprocket to try to do it as much as possible.smooth and smooth as possible with your gear, so if you shift your gears at full power it will probably work, but it won't sound good, it will cause more wear and tear on your gear and there is a much greater chance of dropping a chain and that can be quite dangerous now , having said all that, guess what causes it.

The biggest confusion is when to use the front mech and that's why there's been a big push lately to get rid of the front mech, so like I said before, most modern mountain bikes and many new gravel bikes have done so. completely. away from the front mechanism we have a single gear at the front and now we have up to 12 gears at the rear, it makes a lot of sense to just click up and down and change gears sequentially; however, if you're on a bike with a Mech front gear that's a little more complicated and the reason it's complicated is because we have some overlap of the gear ratios, so if we take a look at this setup here, It is quite common on an endurance road bike, we have two gears in the front, a 50 tooth and a 34 tooth and in the rear we have 11 gears ranging between 11 and 32 teeth, so this graph here shows them all the gears you can have if you use the 50 teeth in the front and here all the gears you can have if you use the 34 teeth in the front so in theory you have 22 gear ratios we can Click here but in reality As you can see highlighted here, there are a lot of overlapping gears, so if we remove them from the 22 gears, we have eight redundant and 14 usable, now the problem is that you can't just click sequentially. through them and this is what makes having a front neck quite confusing so when you change your front mech it all comes down to personal preference a bit, it comes down to how far down the road you are thinking and again , it takes a little time.

It takes practice to get good at it, but let's imagine you're riding up a hill, you're on the big 50-tooth chainring at the front, you get into this gear here and you can see ahead that it's getting steeper. Now, in general, it is modern. The gears on a road bike won't give you an idea of ​​what gear you're in on the handlebars, so a lot of this is done by feel, but this is what you do, you get here and I'll explain it to you in a second. Why would you probably do it here instead of on these gears?

Now, as you click into the smaller 34-tooth gear at the front, the chain will still be in the same gear at the back. actually this gear here, as you can see, is a pretty big jump up to this gear here, so what you would do in this setup to go into the next sequential gear from this is this gear here, you're going to need to shift the rear. derailleur one or two clicks down to a smaller gear to get the sequence right, that sounds very confusing, it's something you'll have to practice and personally what I do is I do the front first and basically pause my pedaling, I'll wait a Heartbeat for the front mech to shift and then I'll double tap the rear mech to shift it down.

Two clicks. You can get an idea of ​​that on your bike. On some bikes, it's just a click, but it's complicated. It's confusing. and that's the problem with a front mech okay so just when you thought this couldn't get any more confusing let's talk about cadence and I can hear you moan and say "OMG" by cottag I thought this was supposed to be a guide simple for Gears, sorry, what can I do? But cadence is a big issue and there are a couple of things to think about here and as with everything cycling it's not clear cut, it's on a spectrum and at one end of the spectrum we have grinding. like pedaling pretty slow and on the other end of the spectrum we have spinning which is basically pedaling pretty fast now depending on how well trained you are most humans can comfortably pedal between 60 rpm and 110 something like that and all The world is different, everyone has their preferences, but what you have to keep in mind is that you tend to use different systems within your body: if you are exercising, you are using more of your muscle power and if you are spinning, you are using your lungs. and your cardio. system, so we're not going to go into this too much, but if your goal is to complete long distance sporting or endurance events, you may want to start training at a slightly higher leg speed and spin the old crank because it's very good. a lot of power at a low cadence, but you're going to tire your muscles pretty quickly, so the other day you were running at the club having fun pedaling and the old man in the group came up to you and told you that you're crossed.

Chaining, you looked at him blankly and said, "I'm sorry, but unfortunately you had no idea what I was talking about." Well, everything is as you can see in these diagrams here if you are on the big plate in the front and on the big plate. one at the back, the chain will be at a fairly acute angle. Likewise, if you're on the small camera at the front and the small one at the back again, the chain will be at a fairly acute angle, now the only real one. The problem with this is that depending on the bike and how extreme the cross-chaining is, it can make a bit of an unpleasant noise and can wear out components a little faster, but at the end of the day, it's up to you if you want it. to cross the chain or not, I guess the recommendation is not to do it, but the next time someone has the audacity to tell you, you can at least shrug your shoulders, so another question that frequently arises is: is it okay to change gears? while you are?

I'm pedaling out of the saddle and while it's possible, I'd personally say don't do it, it's a pretty tricky gear change and if the chain comes loose while you're doing it, it could end in tears, okay? After all that, take a breath, I thought I'd break up the jargon a little in this section, first, groupset, a groupset tends to be made up of all the components that are bolted to a frame to turn it into a bike, brakes, rear mechanism, front mechanism. chain cassette shifters bottom bracket drivetrain all the bits and bobs used to convert the power of your legs into forward motion feel free to pause this image and learn the different names for everything very often bikes will be cited as out of 10 speeds and 11 speeds 12 speeds and what that refers to is the number of gears in the rear cassette, this cassette here in the sram force etap group is 12 speeds, do not be confused with 20, 22 and 30 speeds, 20 speeds refers to 10 speeds with two. gears in the front 22 is 11 speed with two gears in the front and 30 would be 10 speed with three gears in the front or a triple chain set we call it a chain set in the UK, in the US.

They call it a crank set and On road bikes there are usually three that you can choose from: compact, semi-compact and standard. If you go with a standard crankset, you'll want to be a fairly competent rider, and if you're looking for endurance. bike on which you are going to do a lot of hills you will probably want to opt for a compact one. I personally have a semi-compact and I have done the unthinkable. I put 34 teeth on a chainring that Shimano I advise against doing that, but it seems to work well for me, so I have the best of a compact and a semi-compact, a 52 34.

You can get a triple chain set. You don't see them very often, but you might put them on. a touring bike or something like that that would be called three because if, like we talked about before, you only have one front chainring, then it's one for probably a mountain bike or a gravel bike or you have two because that's what this is here and that's quite common on road bikes, people often refer to something called a granny ring which used to refer to the small ring on a three but we generally now use it to refer to the smallest of a ring.

This bicycle here has a mechanical group, in this case it is from Shimano, it is the Ultegra group and it is operated by cables that go through the frame to the shift levers. Mechanical groupsets are your cheapest option or if you want to spend a lot of money you can choose an electronic groupset like this one which is the completely wireless sram etap access groupset. The shift and mixture levers have batteries and communicate with each other wirelessly. What that means is that you don't need the cables to pass through. the bike when you click the shift levers to change gears the motors inside the mechanism place the chain over the correct gear the shimano version is called di2 neither of those two sets of electric groupsets should be confused with an electric bicycle, which is what it is, that it has a motor In it, as you pedal, it receives some power to help you.

Now, at this point in the video, I was going to talk about how different bikes have different gear ratios, but looking at this slide now it seems so complicated that I'm not going to do that. Don't bother if you want to take a look at this, feel free to pause the video and check it out by all means now when you buy a new bike or have already bought a bike but feel like the gears aren't quite right. For you, there are many options to change the gear on your bike. This is a pretty important topic in itself and usually revolves around you changing the cassette for a different set of ratios and if this is something you want to know more. about leaving a comment below and maybe we'll make another video about it so my final note on this video is even though it sucks try to keep your stream nice and clean hopefully one day they'll invent a whole new system that doesn't . completely open to mud, dirt and grime because if you ride your bike three times a week and you have to clean the chain three times a week it is a hassle and remember that once you have cleaned it you should give it a good lubrication, there are several options different. ways we can do it again maybe it will be another video let me know what you think in the comments below and if you like this video please like it and if you haven't already how about you subscribe to my channel until the next?