650s and Gearing

I find Sheldon Brown’s (may he rest in peace) gear calculator to be very valuable in answering these types of quetions. I’ve used it a lot to input various combinations. I couldn’t tell from your message but if you have one bike that’s 700c and the other is 650c, this site makes it easy to figure out the equivalent gears, etc. Might be a good starting point.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/