GearCalc Pro Bicycle Gear Calculator

This upgraded version of the original GearCalc bicycle gear calculator has some nice new features. The most obvious of these is the gear position indicator, shown below:

Also keyboard control has been improved. The up an down arrow keys will now spin the numeric data entry boxes up and down.

The gear usage tables 'suggest' button suggests the best route through your gears based on an algorithm that removes all the smallest steps (ie the duplicates and near duplicates), starting with the gear combinations that will produce the biggest chain angles. The chain angle can be adjusted (as illustrated above) to produce an alternative suggestion.

Two new graph / gear chart plotting options have been added to the assessment. Personally I still prefer the original table which can also be used for cadence optimisation on the road

Why GearCalc Pro?

When I got onto the net, I surfed around to see what my rivals had to offer and discovered that there are already at least three existing bicycle gear calculators - all called GearCalc. I suppose GearCalc is such an obvious name that this was inevitable. I needed some way to distinguish my product from the others, and my program had already been reviewed in three cycling magazines as 'GearCalc'. Arguably the old version was already so much better than the competition, that I should have called it GearCalc Pro in the first place!

Using GearCalc Pro

The GearCalc Pro chart is especially useful for arranging gears to avoid duplicates between adjacent chainrings: just click to add a tooth here, subtract one there, and watch the markers twitch to up or down until the graph is approximately the correct shape. For a single chainring this will be a straight line. But for triple chain rings commonly used on mountain bikes, and some touring bikes, a logarithmic curves are preferred:

After using the 'Gear Usage Table' to weed out the duplicates, the graph becomes linearised, giving eleven fairly evenly spaced gears, that can be traversed with only two chainring changes:

I Must be Certifiable!

When you click Print in the Assessment Table the gear calculator provides certification for your bike. I have put some examples of this here

How Did Riders Manage Before The Bicycle Gear Calculator

Upgrading Your Demo

STOP PRESS! 32BIT VERSION OF BICYCLE GEAR CALCULATOR NOW AVAILIABLE FOR DOWNLOAD! (Click here)

Complete installation set for GearCalc Pro 1.51 is at http://www.machinehead-software.co.uk/newzips/gcp151.zip (844KB)

Latest executable only (if you have already installed a previous version of the gear calculator, just copy this on top of your existing gearcal.exe v1.51. http://www.machinehead-software.co.uk/upgrades/gcp151.zip (88KB)