Climbing

[sambler]

Hi,

After several years of riding a recumbent trike, I've moved to a location at the top of a long, steep hill and am interested in acquiring a recumbent that's a better climber. I've narrowed the choice down to the Quest and the Phantom Lightning. I haven't had a chance to try either. The Phantom has the reputation of being a good bike for climbing because of frame rigidity. Is anyone here able to compare the two from experience?

Thanks.

 

[billyk]

I haven't ridden a Phantom, but have many years on various recumbents, and commute daily in Seattle where we have lots of hills. I've done this on a Quest for the past 4 months.

My experience is that the Quest is a great climber for shallow/moderate grades (up to 5-8%). I maintain a higher uphill speed on the Quest than either on previous recumbents or uprights, and can even accelerate uphill. It just feels very strong climbing. Of course, nothing comes for free and I notice that I am breathing harder appropriate to the faster climbing speed. (Starting uphill needs some learning, and I still sometimes fail).

However ... once the grade gets too steep there is a big problem: when you are tipped back, the weight shifts off the front wheel and then it begins to lose traction and spin. At that point you are done. This is pretty inherent in the front-wheel-drive design. My regular route home from work climbs 1 block of 15% grade. I've done it for more than 20 years on various bikes. But I rarely make it up this block on the Quest; less than half the time. After getting tired of getting off and walking the bike, I now take a 1km detour to avoid that 1-block hill. Other places around town, especially if the street is wet or there is a bit of road grit, I find the front wheel spinning on 10%+ grades.

I have also commented here that the gearing is too high for good hill-climbing. It's too easy to blow out your knees mashing the pedals when climbing, so in my opinion a recumbent needs very low gears for this. I ended up switching out the elliptical chainring for a 32-tooth round one, which improves things.

 

[Charles.Plager]

For what it's worth, I've got

For what it's worth, I've got a Sofrider where I replaced the double crank with a triple that has a 26T granny gear. The largest cog on the rear cassette is 32 on the sofrider instead of the 28 on the quest, so this means that my low end is about 75% of the 26" standar Quest.

I've made it up very short (~50-100 feet) hills of what Garmin says are 20% hills) with my Sofrider. Very smooth, dry pavement. I've also heard that the new tires that come with both the Quest and the Sofrider (the Maxxis Detonators) are much better than what used to come with them (Kwest something or others), and make a big difference in climbing the hills.

As far as the gearing on the Quest, it seems to be to be done for the 22" wheel and doesn't go low enough in my opinion (but goes quite high) for the 26" wheel. Replacing the 42T by a 32T makes the gearing for the 26" quest a little lower than the standard 20" quest. (I like the idea of the E-ring, but as I've never tried it, I don't know how much of advantage it has. Presumably, one could get a smaller E or Q ring).

Cheers,
Charles

 

[sambler]

Thanks

Thanks very much for your comments. Sort of what I was expecting: it's more a question of traction than of power transfer. I think the grade of my hill is (just) under 10%, so I should be okay. I also take it that the 22" wheel may be better for climbing while perhaps not allowing to go high enough on flat ground. I'm leaning heavily towards the Quest at this point.

Cheers,

Steve

 

[Hugh Mitenko]

gear ratio

Since buying my Quest 2.0 and bringing it to work every day (and now getting out for longer rides as well, just for fun) I have been asked about this many times. The latest results with Maria P on the Vendetta (honestly, if I keep having this much fun, I may have to buy one of those as well!) speak for themselves, and her blog on it indicates great climbing ability.

But I have been asked about the gear ratio. I think this seems to be a nice way to translate how low the granny gear goes. To me, it seems like it is just about, almost, low enough, and I think with more practice I will be fine. But can anyone (John T?) comment on what the gear ratios in the lowest gear, and highest gear, on the quest 2.0 with 26" wheels, are? Alternately, I may just measure it out on a parking lot with the GPS...

Please and thanks,

 

[Hugh Mitenko]

gear ratios...

!! I realized just as I pressed "save" that of course, the gear ratio is the same whatever size wheels you use...

 

[Hugh Mitenko]

Answer! Gear Ratios for Quest 2.0

The Quest 2.0 comes with the SRAM dual drive system, which I really enjoy; and I have the 26" wheels. I have just conducted 25 minutes of internet research to find that in fact, it has a great 'top end' with a gear inch measurement of 135 (wikipedia shows a 'very high' gear inch measurement at 125).

However, the granny gear is just not that low with this setup. The lowest gear gives 28.5 gear inches- here, wikipedia gives a 'very low' gear inch measurement at 20. I suspect (but I am not about to prove) that this means for every time you turn the crank, you get between 28.5 and 135 inches of wheel travel (ie road travel) depending on your gear. It's not exactly the gear ratio, but it's a more useful number.

However, IF you go with the 20" wheels (which I arbitrarily didn't do) you would get a better bottom end but worse top end: 21.9 at the lowest to 103 gear inches at the highest gear. Huh! So once I get good, I'll be able to get REALLY fast without a new chain ring...

My experience thus far (sorry, I don't know the grades on my daily commute but it is reasonably steep in parts) is this: as with any bike, once you gear right down the issue is more one of balance than power, ie, can you maintain your balance while cranking hard and pushing/pulling the bars at low speed? I find I am able to push quite hard into the crank by pushing into the seat back (and I have not yet made the transition to clipless pedals- within another week or 2 I guess and then I'll put out more power). My Quest feels like a better climber than my now-abandoned DF mountain bike, except for that relatively high gear inch measurement at the lowest gear.

 

[John Tolhurst]

Sheldon 'gain ratio' Brown

The target for the Quest gearing was to use one chainring on both wheel sizes and to choose the number of teeth so that most riding could be done on the middle hub gear which is 1:1 - nice and efficient since planetary gears are not engaged.

I analyse in gain ratios, because gear-inches don't take into account crank length. As usual Sheldon Brown has the answer. http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/

You are right, the smaller wheeled bike has lower gearing. Your other comment, that gearing below a ridable speed has little value, is also one that influence our choice of gearing for Quest.

 

[Peder Torgersen]

Phantom verses Sofrider

My first recumbent was a Phantom I still have it.
It climbs about the same speed for me as my second recumbent a Sofrider.

I find the Sofrider very practical so that has been my commuter for several years.
One reason is I have to let the bike stay outdoors at work and it often rains here.
I take the seat pads inside and when I ride home the rain often has stopped and I have a dry seat.

I also like the suspension it's better on dirt roads and I use it for winter riding with studded tires.
This winter was very short snow didn't last long and the cold period was only a couple of weeks.
I do get some front wheel spin in the winter but this winter I only had to walk up a hill 2 times because of the snow.
I wouldn't recommend it for winter riding because winter riding on slippery ice and snow is not easy on any 2 wheeler but it works for me didn't think it would when I first tried it.

 

[Charles.Plager]

What Gear Inches mean

When you say that you are in a gear that is 26", that is equivalent to riding a bike with a 26" wheel where everytime you turn the pedals once, you rotate the wheel once (e.g., like on a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing).

As far as the Quest goes, I think Jon's right. Given that they wanted to accomodate both a 22" and 26" wheel, they had to decide what was reasonable for both and I think they probably got it just about right. That being said, since I'm a flatlander now living in hills, I don't think the 26" Quest or Sofrider go low enough for my taste, especially when pulling kids in a trailer, but even just up long 10%+ inclines by myself.

(To be fair, I'm not yet clipping into the pedals and I can see this making a substantial difference as far as how low a gear I want).

Cheers,
Charles

p.s. Does anybody know of a smaller e-ring (or q-ring) that can be put on the Quest?

 

[Charles.Plager]

Clipless pedals and gearing

Hi,

I had made the comment above that I hadn't yet tried out clipless pedals and climbing. Now that I have, the biggest surprise (to me) is that while I can now use both legs at once pulling and pushing on the pedals, I also find spinning faster much nicer being clipped in than before. I thought I might find that I didn't need as low of a gear for going up hills, but now I'm just as convinced that granny gears and hills are they way to go.

Cheers,

Charles

(Here's a link to my blog entry about this).

 

[patricklee]

any technique on riding a Quest when climb up long hill

After got a Quest two months ago and tried out climbing a hill for the first time last Saturday, I have found when the bike dropped below 7 kph the steering becoe unstable as the pedalling alter the direction. Is there techique required to ride apart from using high caldence. Thank you for your suggesting.

 

[billyk]

Quest gearing (the numbers)

According to Jim Parker (who should know), for the Quest 2.0:

"The gear-inch range is 22.2 to 105.7 for the 20" and 26.3 to 124.7 for the 26".

I swapped the 42-tooth elliptical chainring for a round 36-tooth ring, so that reduced the gear inch by 36/42=85.7%, thus to 22.5-107.

 

[patricklee]

Thank you for your advice. I

Thank you for your advice. I shall try out to climb slope again and see how things go this time before I decide to get a longer teeth chainring.

 

[Charles.Plager]

Hi,
One part of this is

Hi,

One part of this is experience. The longer you've ridden, the slower you can go without falling over. I've recorded speeds as 3.5 mph (5.6kph) up big hills. This is with in a very low gear (17") on my Sofrider. (I've got just about 1,000 miles/1,600 km on the bike now).

Cheers,
Charles

 

[Charles.Plager]

(http://recumbentquant.blogsp

(http://recumbentquant.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-low-can-i-go.html is the link I was trying to post in the last message but was stopped by the "spam filter")