Originally Posted by
HillRider
Changing the cassettes to 12x27 9-speed will help a fair bit. The 11x28 will probably work but the 11T cog will likely be useless. A 14x28 will also be likely to work and give you more useful inner gears if a 53x14 top gear (102 gear-inches) is adequate as it probably will be.
I've done the gear inch calcs and a 27 or 28t cog should be fine I think. I'm not so worried about the smaller(big gear inch) cog as 12 or 14 will work...I'm not racing. Sticking with 9-speed is fine too.
So you're saying 12x27(or in that range) 9-speed cassettes do exist and will function well with the existing crank and derailleurs?