27.5 to 29

I took advantage of the latest Knolly sale to upgrade from my Warden V1 to a new Chilcotin 167. The Chili is a beast on the downhills, it just cruises over everything and holds the speed really well. Everything I've heard the 29 was going to be.

Where I'm struggling is on the climbs. My fitness is a bit low right now but climbing feels harder than I'm used to. I ran a 30 tooth oval on the Warden and put the same on the new bike. It just plain feels harder to pedal up, and living on Burke, that's an issue. The new bike is around 4lbs heavier than the old one as well, so add that in. 

Is this normal? I was going to give it a month to see if my legs could build up some strength but I'm hating the struggle.

The bigger wheel does reduce your gear ratio, so you are using more watts to turn that 29 over. Can you fit a smaller ring?

mullet it

If you can reduce the rolling resistance of the tires that will help a lot on the climbs. I use a 28T ring for my 29ers and my GF uses a 26T or 28T ring. When I got my latest FS bike it was 7lbs heavier than my previous bike. I didn't find that extra weight had any real impact on my climbing. Slow tires OTOH make me want to blow my brains out going uphill.

You need to go 2 or 4 teeth smaller for sure, just to have the same gearing.

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As others have said, you'll want to go to a smaller chainring size going from 27.5 to 29.

You can use ritzelrechner to compare gearing setups between different wheel and tire sizes.

Also since you say your fitness is low right now, perhaps if you gained some weight, that may also be noticeable. When climbing you are mostly fighting gravity and your own body weight.

In terms of improving climbing fitness, a little workout routine for core and leg strength goes a long way. It's almost like a cheat code.

I assume your warden is 650B, so your new bike will have a ~5% harder granny gear

tire size matters too, going from 2.2" to 3" would be ~2% harder in granny gear

Then there are the perceived gear differences caused by oval/non-oval chain rings and differing crank lengths.

And with some combinations of the above, you can get the opposite feeling depending on if you are accelerating from stopped or maintaining speed once rolling.

thanks everyone! Looks like a 28 tooth chainring is coming.

@[email protected] that's a great calculator.

Lots of assumptions being made here.   Sure, 2-4 teeth smaller will help.

Your cassette range also matters.  

Same old 36T cassette on a new frame and wheels, or did the new bike come with the newest monster 52T rear pieplate?

Posted by: heckler

Lots of assumptions being made here.   Sure, 2-4 teeth smaller will help.

Your cassette range also matters.  

Same old 36T cassette on a new frame and wheels, or did the new bike come with the newest monster 52T rear pieplate?

Same cassette

Cassette Size?

I went to a 28 absolute black from the stock 30 on my yeti 5.5 which was a 29er and it helped the climbing cuz all the riding here is on a bluff . I had to drop some links but the thing with going smaller is the ability for your cranks (the spider can get in the way) to let you go small so the splined interface on the Affect cranks let me do it but the real cure after I blew my ACL was an E-bike

Posted by: heckler

Cassette Size?

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