I have a Shimano EF50, 8 speed and a Shimano Acera rear derailleur. I have absolutely no experience with bike gears! How do I use them?
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just ride and change gears
Practise with them. They should never be rattling or clattering. Sometimes you need to tweak the front one a little bit to stop this. Remember to slacken off the pressure while changing until you are sure that the chain has completed its move.
Don’t “cross over”. This means don’t use big rings together or the small rings. You should move the chain from side to side keeping the front and back more or less parallel.
Learn your cadence. This means that whatever the situation your legs should be doing the same RPM. This will be somewhere around 70 to 90. If you are twirling around too fast you can not get the power into the pedals so change up. If you are straining against the pedals because you are going too slow the same thing applies. Change down gears.
The left shifter controls the front derailleur which moves your chain on the three sprockets near your pedal. You basically have three gears here. The small ring ( #1 position ) is for low gear to go slow and climb. The middle gear ( #2 ) position is for medium speed and slightly harder to pedal. This can be used for level ground. The larger gear ( #3 ) is for high speed cruising or going downhill. It is the hardest to pedal. The right shifter controls the gears on the back wheel, and you have 7,8,or 9 sprockets. Use these to fine tune whatever front gear you are in. The lower numbers are easier to pedal, then gradually shift up as your speed increase to the higher numbers. As you speed up and go to the highest on the right, you can then go to the next largest gear using the left shifter and then go back down to the lower numbers on the right. Select the proper gear in advance in changing terrain, and if a climb is coming up, then get in your lower gears well in advance.
It’s all about the size difference between two gears. You’ve got 2 or 3 big gears up front (called the chain rings) and a bunch of little gears in the back (called the cogs). Your shifters let you select which gears you want by moving the chain from one gear to another. Little gears up front combined with big gears in the back have a lot of power but aren’t very fast. This is good for going up hills. Big gears up front combined with little gears in the back have a lot of speed but aren’t very powerful. This is good for going downhill. Put everything in the middle as a starting place for riding on flat ground. Select different gears in the back to get more power or speed as you need it, depending on your terrain. When you run out of gears in the back, change the gears in the front.
This is very much simplified, but should get you started.