What's your favourite gear ratio?

By my calculation, you'd buzzsaw your right bollock with a 387.

first time ive looked at this thread for ages and have to say its still the most tedius one ever thought up.

My latest bike has a flip flop hub and brakes, the fixed side is 70 gear inches which is super spinny and I like this in Paris, the freewheel is 75 which is better for my commute which involves 20 clicks across country roads.

Tedious, hmm, talking gear inches is what separates the men from the boys.

47x17 - 72.7 inches and 34 patches.
Great all rounder. Can take on all terrain

^Been on that train for 6 months brakeless

planning to gear up this spring 52/19 - 73.9

Living in Beautiful but Hilly British Columbia

I have developed an Android app in large part inspired by this and similar threads, and trying to make comparisons between all these different configurations, works out the gear inches for a given combination of chainring and sprocket and then gives nearest equivalent configurations, useful when planning a fixed gear conversion or just fun in a nerdy kind of way - its on Google Play - called (originally) Singlespeed Gear Ratio App - it's cheap and I like it! Have fun and feedback welcome.

50p is cheap but gear inchy is free and seems pretty similar, although the equivalents pic looks interesting. Maybe pictures of cats riding said gear inch choices would be a USP.

GearInchy also has skid patches and gear ratio, which might be good additions to yours.

GearInchy also has skid patches and gear ratio, which might be good additions to yours.

Thanks for the feedback, GearInchy is indeed fine but as far as calculating ratios goes it only does what the first screen of mine does, and lots of on-line calculators do, which is give you the gear inches for a given combination, so you end up doing lots of calculations and writing the results down. What I wanted was an app that enabled you to find the ratio for a combination you were interested in and then see at a glance what other chainring/sprocket combinations would give you a similar ratio. That's what mine does, and I'm happy for it to do that one very useful thing well and not try to do anything else because I like to keep it simple and focused and easy to use. That's not to say that I won't think about adding other functions such as skid patches, and cats are always cool, but for now I think its adding something new to what's available and well worth 50p (as a developer I'm not too keen on all this free stuff anyway - tends to skew the market in favour of big corporates with deep pockets and against artisan developers like myself).

Like I said, that page looks useful, if it had skid patches I'd find 50p* to give you and get rid of gearinchy, otherwise I'd be keeping 2 apps for one thing. Saying that, I've got bicycle calculator too, which I never use.

*Download, keep .apk, get refund :P

'FixedGears' on Android does equivalent ratios, and skid patches, and speed at cadence, and it's free...

55/19.

'FixedGears' on Android does equivalent ratios, and skid patches, and speed at cadence, and it's free...

Oh dear I have obviously overpriced my app, never mind I'll see if I can sell our landlord and Tesco's on the free stuff model and when they see the light I can start happily giving away the software I have developed for free...

Or you could have assessed the market you were trying to enter before you developed your app. Not knocking your efforts, but you have no USP over a competitor...

Cats.

Finished my first fixie at the weekend. Current ratio 52:16 with 170 cranks but a bit high for me. Thinking of getting an 18 or 19 rear cog instead. Sound about right to those in the know?

Assuming you're on 25c tyres (or similar) get yourself a 44t chainring and a 17t cog.

Then you can run a cog on each side and have 73" (summer) and 68" (winter).

Thanks for the advice. Really like the chainset I've got. that's the only thing.

I like ice cream but I don't think it's very useful on my bike.

Finished my first fixie at the weekend. Current ratio 52:16 with 170 cranks but a bit high for me. Thinking of getting an 18 or 19 rear cog instead. Sound about right to those in the know?

Good to go!

42.16 /spin to win tbh

"Finished my first fixie at the weekend. Current ratio 52:16 with 170 cranks but a bit high for me. Thinking of getting an 18 or 19 rear cog instead. Sound about right to those in the know?"

"Good to go!"

+1

As I'm sure you're aware if you've read this thread, determining the right gear ratio is very individual. That said, any gear ratio around 2.75 - 3.0 will suit most people running 700x23 tires or there about for most rides; 52/18 and/or 52/19 are both fine.

53t Chainring>52t Chainring

52x18 is 33kph at 90rpm.

If you can ride all morning at that speed congratulations, but most people can't and would get fitter by working up to it.

IMO.

"52x18 is 33kph at 90rpm.

If you can ride all morning at that speed congratulations, but most people can't and would get fitter by working up to it."

Like I said, it's very individual, and needless to say I would never recommend a gear you can't push. I withstand that a gear ratio around 2.75 - 3.0 will suit most people for most type of rides.