What do the gears do? (Mountain Bike)?

  • Thread starter Thread starter LokiAkuma
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LokiAkuma

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I've recently got a Mountain bike to cycle the scenic country with. It's my first mountain bike, and the last time I had a bike was back when I was 11 - 12, and it had no gears. The mountain Bike has 2 dials, one on each handle, the Gear dial on the left goes from 1 to 3, and the one on the right goes from 1 to 7. Care to explain what they're used for, and when?
 
you've got a lot of gears to work with. the left is the 'range' of gears, and the right is the gear selector
for the rear wheel. Total you have 21 different gear ratio options.

What they do for you is allow you to adjust the leverage your feet have to push the bike.
a 'high' gear will allow you to pedal at a comfortable pace while cruising fast on flat or downhill, where a 'low' gear gives you more leverage to pedal as that same pace while moving slow up a steep hill.

another way to look at it, it allows you to adjust how fast you spin the pedals as the bike changes speed.

the different gears trade speed for torque. high gears give you high speed but little torque. low gears give you a lot of torque but little speed. Adjust as needed.
 
The answers so far are all good.

Use the gear combinations to let your legs spin the pedals at 60 rpm or higher. Increases efficiency and lets you ride further without tiring. Gear way down when going uphill to keep your pedaling rate up as much as possible. Not much point in slugging along in high gears when you've got the low ones to spin nicely.
 
Use 2 on the left and 1-7 on the right for most of your riding. For hills use left 1 and 1-3 on the right. For going fast and down hill use left 3 and 5-7 on the right.

http://bicycletutor.com/gear-shifting/
 
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