[QUOTE=alan s;18592793]Looking to make my 11-speed road bike drivetrain more climbing friendly. For rolling hills, when fully loaded, I am in the lowest gear more than I would like, and the plan is to do some trips that involve more serious climbing this summer. What are the options for lower gearing?

Hi Alan,

I'm doing something similar on my rig so just to give you some options.

Instead of going with a shiftmate and mountain I went with a "GoatLink" and kept my Shimano 6800 Di2 long cage road derailleur and a 40-11 speed XT M8000 mountain cassette.

I'm running a 135mm 11 speed "road" compatible freehub and a mountain cassette with a spacer on the inside. Its kind of confusing because you'd think they would be universal but they're not. Example my old 135 cyclocross 10 speed rear hub wouldn't fit a road 11 speed cassette but the 11 speed mountain cassette fit just fine. Just something to confirm before buying new parts.

As I was saying so I'm still running the 50/34 in the front. I had to add chain links otherwise risked damaging the derailleur if I accidentally shifted into large/large. So my system runs fine just be aware that cross chaining is a no no if you follow suite. The last two cogs on each end of the cassette are dedicated to the corresponding chain rings. Two largest rear must be ran on the 34 and two smallest rear on the 50.
On 700c wheels with 32mm tires that gave me a gear inch range of 23-123.

This would in my opinion would be the easiest and cheapest conversion, goatlink about $40 and cassette about $80, the only thing is you need to be aware of what gears you're in and not cross chain. If you add enough links you wont damage anything immediately by going large/large but it's a balancing act. The more links you add the less 34/ rear derailleur cog range that you'll have. The reason is because you've exceeded the rear derailleurs take up limit. The advantage is you don't lose your top end gearing this way but you limit how low you can get.

The other option if want or need to spend the money is a Schlumpf Cargo/Mountain drive. I went that route on top of what I previously did and now have a gear range of 9.5-123 gear inches. My reasoning was because I'm riding a really heavy touring bike and have bad knees.

The reason I went this route rather than a mountain bike front derailleur was two fold. One since I'm running Shimano Di2 I can mix groupsets and would have to run two systems, not a problem since you're going mechanical. Second at least for me was that if I did go with the mountain bike front crank and derailleur I would end up with an upper limit of about 90 gear inches. This was the solution that I came up with to gain the low gearing but not lose my higher end.

Just be aware that this is an expensive conversion so you have to decide for yourself if it's worth it.

Hope you find this helpful

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