Gear Ratio & Skid Patch Chart

I get loads of people asking me about gear ratio's all the time, so here is a link to a neat little chart with all the info you need.

(click to view full size)
There is no such thing as a perfect ratio, it all depends on the type of riding you intend to do and the area in which you live. In our home town, Swansea, the city centre is flat and surrounding areas have some big fucken hills, so finding a ratio that suits can be tricky. As you know, hills are super fun to blaze down, but a bitch to get back up. I guess you need to do a bit of experimentation to see what suits, although I always recommend resisting the temptation of going too low as keeping up with traffic will be difficult and you will find you are spinning way too fast most of your time. People seem to always wanna go low so 'they can skid easily' or get up the hills, but remember that your legs will take time to get conditioned and with persistance everything will fall into place as you get fitter. I'm riding 47x17 on one bike and 42x16 on the other. I use the higher ratio for training or going longer distances, and the lower for pissing about around town.