John, I don't think there were ever any "... 52-14 days of 130BCD cranks". A nerdy quibble I know, but please bear with me ...
I believe the venerable 52-14 high gear dates from early 144 bcd crank days when Campi ruled and the Japanese copied Campi, when a common racing chainring combination was 52/42, freewheels had 5 cogs starting with a 14t, and cassettes were several years off. Back then (when I was younger and lived in a flatter area) I had a bike with 52/44 rings and a 14-18 straight block. That was really nice. Later on 53/42 was quite common before the 130bcd 53/39 cranks took over (and 14t small cogs went out of fashion). Then came the "compact double" 50/34 (110bcd?) cranks sold as the more reasonable alternative for non racers who for whatever reason did not want a triple. These days I hear that the 52t big ring is making a resurgence on "mid-compact" cranks with 52/36 rings (on 110bcd?). On the other end small cogs went from 14 to 13, 12 and then settled at 11 for quite some time (as the number of cogs grew form 5 to 10) before SRAM started offering 1x drive trains with cassettes that started with a 10t cog (with the number of cogs at 11 and looking towards 12). Be all that as it may, aside from being a nice "round" number there is nothing special about 100 gear inches, or 52-14 (which, by the way, doesn't give a 100" gear with the tires people raced on back then). Plenty of folks have no use for a gear that large, and plenty of folks who are not professional racers find gears larger than 100" to be quite useful and like to have them. Anybody interested in "optimizing" their gears owes it to themselves to figure out what high, and low gears they like through introspection and experimentation. Cruising gears too. Along the way they will also figure out what size gaps between gears they like, and then they can choose a combination of rings and cogs that strikes the compromise they are happiest with. Said compromise may or may not be the same for any number of bikes they may own. In the case of the OP, he currently has a 50/34 crank and a cassette that starts at 11. He should have no trouble figuring out how big a gear he wants just by paying attention to what he uses. Of course as RBW points out (at least I think they used to, I cant find it on the site now), you can't go far wrong with a 46/36/24 triple and an 11-32 cassette and anybody not inclined to obsess about their gears really ought not feel bad about not doing so. On Sunday, January 1, 2017 at 2:16:42 PM UTC-8, John Hawrylak wrote: > > Jay > > I would get a crank to give 100GI with existing 11-30 for Large ring/small > cog or change the cassette to get 100GI for large ring/small cog, for > example > > Current Crank & Existing Cassette, 46-11 = 113GI, pretty high for all > but pros > > Current Crank & New Cassette, 46-12 = 103GI, still higher than > 100GI > 46-13 = 95GI, > maybe a tad too low > > New Crank & Existing Cassette, 42-11 = 103 GI, better but same as > 46-12, still too high > 41-11 = > 100GI, the magic number from 52-14 days of 130BCD cranks > 40-11 = 98GI, > pretty close to the magic 100 and matches RBW's 40-26 XD2 offering. the 14 > tooth difference (40-26) should shift OK > > John Hawrylak > Woodstown NJ > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
