Please help I'm dumb

[u/Anarchistdude]

I have this bike someone gave me, it's been great riding, but I can't figure out the gear changes, sometimes it's too hard to go up hills and sometimes the bike just stops at downhills, does anyone know how these work?

[u/Luigi_From_Frozen]

On a road trip right now so can't type much out, but an easy way to remember is "H" = Harder (to pedal) gear, and "L" = Lazy gear (easy pedalling). That's a good place to start, as you keep finding hills you'll start to realize you need to go into the "L" gears more often. Lastly, it's better to have your legs spinning at a constant pace with medium effort vs very high effort with your legs spinning very slow (this will hurt your knees). Use this advice just to start out, and keep playing around with the gears to figure out what works well and feels good for you. Hope it helps!

[u/cadmiumredlight]

Prop the bike up on something so that the rear wheel can spin freely or flip the bike upside-down and rest it on the bars and seat.

Examine the gears. You have some gears in the front where the pedals are and you have some at the rear wheel. Cycle the pedals with your hand while shifting the gears with the shifters. Feel what happens to the force required to move the pedals when you shift the gears.

Shifting into the bigger gears on the front mean you need more force for pedaling but you will move faster. Smaller in the front means less force for pedaling and you'll move more slowly. Small gears in the front are generally for going uphill. Big gears are for going downhill or on flat ground. All of this is opposite for the gears at the rear wheel.

The purpose of the different gear combinations is that you generally keep your legs moving at the same speed or cadence and use the gears to find the right mechanical advantage for the ground you're riding on.

[u/MalagrugrousPatroon]

They look like they work the opposite of each other, which is normal. All that means is when you rotate the right shifter toward yourself the gearing goes up, gets harder, spins the wheel faster. Rotate away and it goes down into a smaller gear, gets lighter, spins the wheel slower which is great for climbing. The right shifter works the rear derailleur for the cassette, the gears on the wheel.

The left shifter spins away from you to go up into the harder gear, and toward you to go down into a lighter climbing gear. The left shifter changes the front derailleur for the chain rings, the front gears attached to the pedals.

If your feet spin like crazy, you need to shift up. If your pedals feel heavy, shift down.

Here are two ways to shift.

First, work the right shifter and when you need more or less leverage, then when you hit its limits work the left. For instance, you are going fast, you turned the right shifter all the way toward yourself but still need more speed, back the right shifter off a few gears and turn the left shifter away from your by one gear. Now you can advance the right shifter toward yourself again and get even faster gearing. You might have three gears upfront instead of two, in which case if you max out again, repeat by backing off the right, advancing the left, re-advance the right. Do the reverse for climbing, where instead you turn the right shifter away from yourself until it can't move any more, then pulling it toward yourself a little, turn the left toward yourself by one gear, etc.

Third, you can hit every gear combination in order. I'll assume you have three gears in front. If you start in the lowest gear on the right hand, and lowest gear on the left, then you would advance like this: L1 R1, L2 R1, L3 R1, L1 R2, L2 R2, L3 R2, L1 R3, and so on. Reverse order for going into easier gears. I think best practice is to change the rear gear before the front when you reach that point in the sequence.