Yesterday I rode for an hour and a half and actually looked for hills, to see how much my knee has improved. When I got home I realized I had never put my Sturmey Archer 5 speed hub into wide range mode, so I'd gotten by with 3 gears. If I were going on a tour, here in the midwest, I would seriously consider one of my S5 equipped bikes, with their 225% range.
3 of my tandems have 24 speed setups, but none of our singles have an overabundance of gears.
At 12/29/2006 11:55 PM -0500, philip bailey wrote:
It will be one of those CVT's that
>shuts off at red lights, lol. It will weigh 40 lbs and cost $7,000 for CVT
>alone which needs to be computer adjusted once a month and rebuilt every
>year at half the purchase price
There already is a CVT on the market,
http://www.fallbrooktech.com/
It has a 350% range, weighs 9 pounds and is going to be OEM on a few bikes next year. I doubt Batavus would get involved if testing hadn't proved them to be reliable. If they ever get the weight down to 5 lbs, I'll buy one.
Mark Stonich;
Minneapolis Minnesota
http://mnhpva.org
http://bikesmithdesign.com