pic: 3CIM Ball Shifter

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

While this discussion has quickly gone on a tangent, I do have a question: Other than lowering current draw for pushing situations, what's the point of a low gear? Unless you're traveling quite fast, your acceleration won't be notably better. For short distances it seems a low gear would be helpful, but because the distances traveled are so short, you're not saving that much time anyway.

I guess what I'm wondering is when someone would want to use a 7-9 FPS low gear with a 14-16 FPS high gear. It seems like to me the only situation where low gear would be more useful than high gear for those speeds would be when you have to push or make really fine adjustments, and both of those are accomplished well with a ~5.5 FPS, 40A traction limited low gear.

I don't have any experience here; I've only ever worked with single speeds, so I'd like to learn.

We use our low gear in more of a West Coast Style. It seems like 254/968 (when I was growing up) rarely used their low gear, even for short distances. It was moreso for the few times you were forced to push through defense.

We use it in the same way, and then also use it for thins like balancing on the bridge last year.

For how our drivers operate, I view low gear as insurance that lets you gear as fast as you desire for other objectives, but still have a drive mode where you won't get destroyed by defense (tripping breakers, etc...)

Because of this, we love a real slow low gear.