Help - Triple vs. Compact & loads of hills

[Triskeliongirl]

I ran some numbers through sheldon browns calculator. If the formatting of the table messes up this is a summary:

1. On your old bike your lowest gear was a 30/26 = 30.3 gear inches.

2. On the new bike your lowest gear is a 34/25 = 35.7 gear inches.

3. The least expensive solution is to install a road casette, 12/27 (assuming its shimano) but that will only get you to 33.1 gear inches, in between the 2 situations.

4. If you want to go lower, and you have a long cage road derailleur you might get away with a mountain 12/32 casette, that will get you to 27.9 gear inches, lower than the old bike. This is borderline for a long cage road rear derailleur, a mountain rear dearailleur will surely work though.

5. If you wanna go lower, you need to install a mountain rear dearailleur and an 11/34 (or 12/34) rear casette. That will get you to 26.3. This is what I have and lower than your current set up.

50 34 30
25 52.6 35.7 31.5

26 50.5 34.4 30.3

27 48.7 33.1 29.2

32 41.1 27.9 24.6

34 38.6 26.3 23.2


If its campy, I think you can get a 13/28 road casette which will also help alot.

Of course you can also put a triple on, but then in addition to changing the crank set (not cheap) you may also need to change the front derailleur and possibly brifters depending on compatability, so most expensive solution.