On 08/19/2013 10:32 AM, Patrick Moore wrote:
That's the point. A direct drive #2 gear with a 33% increase to high,
as with the AW, leaves you -- at least, it leaves me -- with a high
gear that is for practical purposes of no use, and a higher low gear
than I would like. Now that would be no problem if indirect gears on
the AW had minimal drag (whence my original question), but the
consensus seems to be that, even with the relatively simple AW, they
will cause more friction than direct.
Absolutely, definitely the case, based on my 5 years' daily riding an
AW. And I agree, high can be absurd: not only too high, but so much
internal drag as to be minimally useful. One thing that helps is to
change the sprocket so as to bring the gears down a bit. On a DL-1
70ish was too high for a normal gear anyway, so bringing it down to the
mid 60s made it better, also made the high a bit more usable. Clearly
a 25% increase for high and a 30% decrease for low would make more
sense, but that's not how they're made.
The 4-speed FM would probably suit you a lot better. For a 26" wheel, a
48T chain ring and a 18T sprocket you get:
Low - - High
46.2
59.4
69.3
78.0
All eminently usable gears. Direct drive is 69.3. Make it a 19T and
you get
Low - - High
43.8
56.3
65.7
73.9
That pretty much covers most people's preferences for a cruising gear,
and either way the high is nice but not unreasonably high and the two
low gears are welcome. .67, .86, 1.0 and 1.13 for the gear ratios.
Don't know why they ever stopped making that one. It makes a whole lot
more sense as a usable drive train than the 3 speeds ever did.
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