There are three basic systems:
The first is slick and easy to use, but fiddly to set up correctly and if you want to do something that its makers don’t want you to, it’s rather difficult. If it breaks, then fixing it is also fiddly, if not impossible and requiring complete reinitialisation.
The second system is an older approach, tried and tested, but fell out of fashion with the rise of the first and very rarely comes preinstalled on new machines. Many recent installations can be switched to and from the first system at the flick of a switch if wanted. It needs a bit more thought to operate but not much and it’s still pretty obvious and intuitive. You can do all sorts of customisations and it’s usually safe to mix and match parts. It’s debatable whether it is more efficient than the first or not.
The third system is a similar approach to the other two, but simplified in some ways and all the ugly parts are hidden away inside neat packaging. These days you can maintain and customise it yourself without much more difficulty than the other systems, but the basic hardware still attracts a price premium. In theory, it’s less efficient than the other types, but in practice it’s easier to maintain so doesn’t lose much efficiency. Some support companies for the other types won’t touch it while others will only work with it.
So that’s the three types of bicycle gears: indexed, friction and hub. What did you think it was?
I do not know what I would have guessed it was, since I had a glance to your conclusion before I read the entire text! 🙁
I personally use indexed gear with trigger shifters, which are very fast and efficient. They require a fine tuning of the cable tension, but I am used to that and there are micro-uning rings for that so it is not really difficult. I would not switch to a hub gear, for many reasons:
1. I think it requires to completely dismount and rebuilt the rear wheel, which I do not think I would be able to do without it into something more oval than circular;
2. it has few ratios (I have about 11 usable ratios on my 3×7 gearing),
3. I have never seen any spare parts for hub gears and I am not sure I would be able to open one to change broken parts at all.
Now, compared to friction shifting, I think my indexed trigger shifters are already fast and efficient enough: I can already change from the maximum ratio to the minimum in less than a second, which is less efficient than friction shifting indeed, but efficient enough for me!
Hah… I thought, at first, that you were talking about init systems… :$
But I’m a software person, not a mechanic, so I have no ideas that there are so many systems for that…
mirabilos – Aha! Init systems! I was expecting operating systems but that one is an unexpected bonus. Oh and I’m no mechanic either, so I was probably misleading…
Elessar – what triggers let you make that change in less than a second? I can barely do one shift on the front and three on the rear range in that time with the Tourney brifters I have. I was sceptical about hub gears but I’m enjoying it so far and would reply to your three points as such:
1. you can buy wheels with hub gears prebuilt in, but it’s easier to try a bike designed for hub gears (roadsters, Dutch bikes, …) rather than switching;
2. number of ratios doesn’t matter as much as range, but 11- and 14-ratio hubs do exist, although they’re not cheap… I’m a cheapskate using a 3-speed at the moment;
3. I’ve a local bike shop that stocks some spares (and there are at least two good online shops in the UK), and there are howto videos online for servicing/replacing parts on the popular models, but I wouldn’t fancy opening up anything more complicated than a 5 ratio hub. The idea is that it needs less servicing than the other types, though we’ll see how that goes in practice.
Ah, at least the friction part is about gear _shifters_! Like Elessar I like my indexed shifters, though I’ve also used friction shifters in the past and found them fine (and possibly for cheaper frame-mounted models they are more reliable).
I was thinking about operating systems, but couldn’t quite match them up 😉
@mjr: I can shift from front 3, rear 7 (maximum ratio) to front 2, rear 4 (middle ratio) in something like .75 s. This is enough for me, though it would take a bit more time to switch from front 3/7 to 1/1 (which would be useless anyway, because there I have never seen a use case for such a brutal ratio shifting). The reverse shifting, that is, increasing the ratio, is a tiny bit slower but it still takes me less than a second to shift from 2/4 to 3/7.