Originally Posted by
Kontact
I used to work for a shop that also had a Pyrenees bike tour once a year. We commonly swapped the customers' chain, cassette and rear derailleur for the trip, than swapped them back out when the travelers got back to Wisconsin. The whole swap took 20 minutes and was relatively cheap to do on either SRAM or Shimano bikes. Same crank, FD, shifters, cables, wheels, etc.
This was my original thought as a temporary change only on hilly tours.
Originally Posted by
Kontact
Chainring changes have enough issues that you might end up swapping the RD anyway. Just do the RD and cassette.
I think that I may already have a 9-speed 11-34 in the parts archive.
So If I leave the front as-is and put a 11-34 or 12-36 cassette I'll need a RD with a 45-46 capacity which puts it into MTB territory for sure.
Originally Posted by
Kontact
Steve_sr , I don't know if has been explained clearly, but that Deore derailleur is just called "9 speed" because that was how it was packaged as a group set. But the derailleur is agnostic and you use it with a 10 speed cassette if you have 10 speed shifters, or 8 with 8, etc.
This says that the cog spacing is equivalent between 8-9-10 speed. What ultimately determines compatibility is the parallelogram travel being sufficient to cover the number of cogs on the cassette.