Advice on crankset, rear derailleur & cassette

SettingSun

Hi All,

It's been a long time since I've been on here (so long that I had to set up a new account as I can't remember by old user name or email) but hopefully that doesn’t stop you giving me a little help. My bike has been out of commission for some time, partly to do with a job change and not having anywhere to shower but more so as it is in dire need of new parts after 12,500+km without a proper service. I’ve been putting this off for too long now so with the new year in I said I would work on fixing it up and would very much appreciate any advice you can give me.

So I’m looking at replacing my crankset, rear derailleur & cassette but first I will give you my riding style as it's probably useful. I love climbing hills, I love pushing in the highest gear. My current set up is a double but it’s rare, if at all, I drop to the smaller chainring on a climb. Maybe I’ve a bad style of cycling or maybe I need to find longer steeper inclines, either way I enjoy cycling the most when I’m cold, tired and aching with the lactic acid build up. So that's me, now on to my upgrades...


First the crankset. I’ve cracked my chainring so I thought rather than just replace that I’d replace the whole crankset. Currently I’m on compact 50/34 tooth chainrings which I believe are 700mm but I’ll have to check that out when I get home. If they are I’m looking at bringing that up to 712.5mm. I like climbing hills and pushing hard so I’m presuming the extra circumference should suit in that respect but I’m a little worried that while upright it could be uncomfortable. An opinion on that would be great. I’m also wondering do I need to replace the bottom bracket when replacing the crankset?

My next question relates to a clicking coming from the gears at the back. The derailleur pulley seems to be a little loose but I’m not entirely convinced it’s the sole reason for the clicking so considering everything I thought I’d change that too. Now this will be a first time for me to service my bike to this level so apologies if this is a silly question but by changing the derailleur am I getting myself into a complicated world with the cabling/cable tension? Presumably I should buy new cabling too?

And now we come to the cassette. I don’t think I’m having any problems with my current cassette but as I mentioned, the bike has some decent mileage on it at this stage and since I’m changing everything else around it I thought I might as well change that too. Size wise however I am a bit in the dark. My current cassette is an SRAM PG-950 11-26, 9 speed. The cassette I’m looking at is available in the sizes 11-25, 11-28, 12-25 & 12-27. Considering my riding style would I be right choosing 12-27?

Outside of that its tyres, handlebar tape, cleats, etc, etc. all of which I think I can manage.



As I said, any help would be greatly appreciated! Cheers

Flandria

I love climbing hills, I love pushing in the highest gear. My current set up is a double but it’s rare, if at all, I drop to the smaller chainring on a climb.

Sounds like you need one of these...;)

unichall

Flandria wrote: »

Sounds like you need one of these...;)

How many teeth on that beast :eek:

Flandria

73:D

I reckon SettingSun could go bigger though...