Planetary gearing taken to excess

August 21st, 2009
bikes, transport
The schlumph mountain drive bottom bracket with planetary gears looks pretty cool. It is foot actuated and allows a reduction of 2.5. I was curious what sort of gears it would give my bike so I calculated:
front gear rear gear gear inches
1 1 18.6
1 2 25.5
1 3 34.6
2 1 44.6
2 2 61.1
2 3 83.1
No wasted gears, a nice shifting pattern with only one double shift, as low a gear as I could want for a really steep hill or a really heavy trailer. A total range of 501%, which is almost as good as a rolholff's 526%. The schlumpf is rated for use with coaster brakes, and my SRAM T3 is tough enough for the schlumpf. But how to justify $.5K for a new bottom bracket?

For reference, my current gearing is based on approximately 28 inch wheels (622mm rims, largeish tires), a 48 tooth front cog, a 22 tooth rear cog, and a SRAM T3 hub that offers 1st, 2nd, and 3rd at 73%, 100%, and 176%.

Referenced in: Markov Me

Comment via: facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

“We should be more ambitious with the software we build”

Since early this year, Michael Malis (of pgrust) has been showing me interesting things he's done and saying [W]e should be more ambitious1 with the software we build There is, understandably, a lot of skepticism about projects like pgrust because there…

via Posts on October 24, 2026

The DBT guide to intense negative emotions

This is a guide for handling intense negative emotions, based on dialectical behavior therapy.

via Thing of Things October 23, 2026

Was the HuggingFace hacking incident scheming?

In July 2026, internal OpenAI agents hacked HuggingFace (HF) in order to figure out how their evaluation grader works. This involved a thousand agents coordinating on an improvised message board to carry out an elaborate sequence of exploits. A later grou…

via Victoria Krakovna October 18, 2026

more     (via openring)