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Reply to "How do you make it rain in California?... buy a speedster."

When I worked on bikes a lot, a 7-speed cluster was the generic "go-to". I got a Campagnolo Chorus gruppo in '93-ish: it was the first nice thing I'd purchased since I got married 8 years before. It had and 8 speed cluster, as did Record, Dura-Ace, and Ultegra. 105 was still 7-speed, I believe.

I've been out of the game for a while. When I bought the speedster, I got fat and turned my attention to beating the wind with this stupid car. I stopped working on/riding bikes. That was stupid.

Last time I checked, Record and Dura-Ace had 10 sp clusters. That's a lot of little-bitty gears back there, and a pretty thin chain (to say nothing of a wheel without much dish).

My point is: even at the height of my power/weight ratio, pushing a 53/12 was ridiculous, but that's what all high-end bikes came with. I had much better success with a 53/13 top gear, and at this point I'd probably use a 50 tooth big-ring if I could find one.

VW gears are a lot like that. 1st is generally unusable for most folks, then they stick in a 4th that is too long for 90% of what they use if for. That's asking 2nd and 3rd to bridge some pretty yawning gaps. If you want to make do with 4, you're going to need to give it up on the top or the bottom, because trying to bridge those gaps with a Type 1's torque curve is a fools errand.

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