18 Comments

  1. 46/20 but it keeps the hills mellow enough that my commuter bike is still a rest day activity and not a workout.

  2. Fuck, that’s beautiful. I almost pulled the trigger on Dolan, but I wanted a single speed and their FXE leaves a lot to be desired. People say pre cursa and fxe are same, but they are not. In fact, fxe comes stealth without decals and only available in black.

  3. BicyclesRuleTheWorld on

    29″ SS MTB: 32/16 or 32/17

    Fixed gear for the road: 51/19

  4. The one that came stock on my elops 500. New to single speed cycling and i was wondering if this is something that could be modified according to taste, and your post answered my question 🙂 I’d love if i had some more resistance to get more push.

  5. 44/16 fixed but going to downgrade to 44/18 so my legs can survive longer rides with some climbing.

  6. 46/16. That’s just what my bike came with and I haven’t seen any reason to change it. I don’t really have much to compare it to sinc this is my fist singlespeed, but to me it seems pretty spot on. Easy enough that I can accelerate from a stop and get up hills but also high enough that I can go decently fast on flats. Around 35km/h is where the cadence is still comfortable. After that I have to spin a little faster that I’d like. But since there are very few situations where I’d want to go faster than 35km/h that’s not really an issue. To be honest I can’t ride that fast for more than a few minutes before being completely winded anyways.

    If I was to change the gearing at all, I think I’d go just slightly lower. Maybe 46/17 or 18. When I try to build speed from a complete stop the first couple pedal revolutions tend to be a bit harder than I’d like and I have to lean on the pedals and sometimes my knees hurt a bit after doing that a bunch of times. And being able to get up hills a bit easier is also a plus. Going faster is nice but since I mostly use the bike for commuting and there aren’t that many situations where you can go full speed in the city to begin with it isn’t really that much of downside.

  7. 40×16, so 2.5 on 26″ wheels with 2″ slicks. I use the bike for food courier job and I’m somewhat happy for now as it’s easy spinning for even 10h shifts, goes well uphill and accelerates fast at traffic lights. When I will finaly have some money I’ll upgrade to 44×17 to minmax chain wear and slightly change ratio.

    For me it’s a bit silly, when people get ratios above around 3.0, as it often means they just ride on very low cadence and their average speed could’ve even go up a bit on lower ratio, as it would’ve been easier to accelerate and keep that speed going. 3 years ago I bought used single speed with 52×17 and starting from 0 was slower than a train, high top speed was useless in urban environment, where I had to often stop for traffic – dropped to 52×19 and bike got nothing but faster.

  8. MeesterPositive on

    48:22, 42:18, 52:18, 36:18

    Just depends on my mood. Low gear is for cruising around with the family though.

Leave A Reply