Shimano Drivetrains for Dummies

standard vs compact crank

After more than six years of paging through the multitudinous sins of freelancers at places like HubPages and eHow, we've become inured to the "stupidification" some of those miscreants visit on the internet as a consequence of their ignorance. We have a special antipathy, however for the writers who claim to know better and still muck things up. One such is "former contributing editor to Bicycling" Wade Shaddy, who we found mucking around at GoneOutdoors.com with a little ditty called, "Types of Shimano Gears."

Shaddy was called in several years ago to brush up a piece of dreck written by an anonymous eHowian back in the dark ages. We sympathize with his plight, a little, because the question is at its very core nonsense: there aren't "types" of Shimano gears, there are different Shimano groups with different applications and different price points.
Wade took that tack, performing a masterful copy-and-paste job on Shimano's catalog (as of 2015, at least). Of course, that wasn't enough to make Demand Media happy, so Wade had to do some 'splainin'. That's where our house cycling specialist caught him qualifying for the DotD, when he made this boner statement:

"Common references to front gears includes the term "ring" instead of gear. Two front gears assembled together with pedals and a crank is referred to as a double, or a compact double."

Considering the massive data dump Shaddy performed in his 800-word opus, it's interesting that an "expert" on cycling would gloss over the distinction between a standard crankset and a compact crankset. Here it is for you: a typical double crankset has 53- and 39-tooth chainrings, while a compact double usually has 50- and 34-tooth chainrings. It's an important distinction, since a compact double requires less effort to pedal and is thus a better fit for less powerful riders. You'd think Shaddy would have mentioned that...

...but he didn't: hence his Dumbass of the Day award.

copyright © 2020-2022 scmrak

DD - CYCLING