I'm sure I could work it out but I'm equally sure someone already has...
Before I do anything rash and start looking at any 29ers for my XC bike, it strikes me that I'd be loosing quite a bit of gearing at the lower end.
I currently use a 22t granny and 11-36 cassette and do use the whole block.
The equivalent of how many gears would I loose from the low end by going from 26" to 29"?
I'll then see if I can live without the bottom "n" gears for a bit before I get my creditcard out.
Ta
29ers work out about 10% higher geared than a 26"
The 36t would feel like a 32, or the 22t woudl feel like a 24t on the front or thereabouts.
I've a single ring on my 26er and a 29er SS, with 22-36 you'll be fine unless you really are built like John Prescot and considder thw wheet content in pie pastry as one of your vegetables.
To be honest I don't think I noticed the difference on my 29er. Ran the same chainring sizes and the same cassette size. Once you get the wheels turning it's fine, I imagine you may notice on slow techy climbs, but probably not anywhere else.
Went from 26er with 11-32 cassette to 29er with 11-36 cassette.
Hated it and ditched the 11-36 after three rides; put 11-32 on the 29er and all much better. Stupid pointless dinner-plate sized sprockets that never got used. Want to spin it? That's what the granny ring is for.
lovewookie +1
The Gear Seer website is quite useful for visualising and comparing gearings:
http://www.andrusia.com/gearseer/#
As is Sheldon's gear calculator:
http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/
But more importantly [url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/psa-loose-is-the-opposite-of-tight ]you should read this[/url] 😉
Cheers guys.
GrahamS, ooops I promise I'll lose the loose 'o's.
Stimpy, you need some bigger/steeper hills. I was talking about using all of the 36 with a 22 granny to get up stuff [url= http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=359665&Y=444605&A=Y&Z=120 ]like this on last night's ride[/url]
Tyres on a 29er are typically a little narrower than on a 26" bike. So, using Sheldon's calculator and assuming a bottom gear of 24x36 (not that it matters for the percentage of course), we get:
60-559 = 17.6 inches
56-622 = 19.4 inches
So the bottom gear on the 29er is 10.2% higher than on the 26" bike.
Or, as matthew_h said in the first post "about 10%" 🙂
Stupid pointless granny rings that never got used. Want to spin it? That's what the dinner-plate sized sprocket is for.
FTFY 😉
😆