Hello everyone. This is my second season of riding. I have a preowned 2002 Gary Fisher Utopia that I couldn't have been more happy with. It was just the perfect bike for me and I was enjoying my increasingly long rides.

Then my cassette wore. Like a fool, I didn't bother to figure out what one was installed on it before letting the mechanic at performance bike swap it for one he recommended. (I am not sure it still had the default cassette on it, and based on my experience, I am thinking it was an aftermarket one)

The cassette that was installed is a "SRAM PG-850 8-speed MTB Cassette " size 11-32. This has completely ruined the nirvana I had with my bike.

Previously, I was able to keep my front derailleur (left shifter) in 1st gear and simply used the right shifter. I was able to climb any hill and get great speed on flats all within only a few different speeds at any given time. It was perfect

Now that has all changed. My previously favorite gear is now too easy on its hardest setting yet takes too much strength to get an equal speed as my old one. None of the other gears are any better. It has shaven a few mph off my rides and made the entire experience far worse.

I want to exchange it for a new cassette but I don't know which to choose or understand the differences enough to clearly express my needs to a bike mechanic. What should I do?

Thank you in advance

A few things:

A) From what I've found here:

2002 Gary Fisher Utopia - BikePedia

That bike originally shipped with 9-speed hardware. And further originally shipped with an 11-32 cassette like you have now, which is to say what you have now is basically stock.

2) Presuming you are in fact now using an 8-speed drivetrain and it works right (no spare shift clicks)...just learn what new gears are what. Same way you did initially.

C) The new cassette hasn't shaven off "a few MPH". Your gearing choices have. With a 48t front and 11t rear, you can drive that bike at 40MPH before spinning out. And the low end 28/32 is enough low enough to go over any mountain.

But your old cassette was no "harder" on its "hardest setting." (11 is the "hardest" available.)

That sounds "too hard" but you said "too easy" in the same sentence.

You probably should look into other problems*.

The stock cassette was a 11-32 2002 Gary Fisher Utopia - BikePedia, Stock says 9 speed, not 8, what did yours have originally? Is this the same bike as the Bikepedia link? as this could be the issue.

If the cassette is correct in the speed, the ratios are unlikely to be different from stock unless the ratios are different within the cassette (again knowing what you had originally is needed here). If that's not the issue, thinking something else physically with the bike or not is the issue

What I mean is, in my previous favorite gear, the highest speed does not get me going fast enough, and switching into one of the other two gears on my left shift gets me going fast but it takes far more work than it once did. The perfect combination I had of 1st gear in left, 8th speed in right for flats no longer is there.



I'm not having any problem spinning out and I can get up hills in the low gears easy enough, its simply that I now have to exert seemingly far more effort to get to a comparable speed as my favorite gear in the old cassette, which has resulted in slower speeds for me. I took it out today on a 20 mile ride and tried every combination of gearing options and couldn't find any that were as comfortable as what I was previously using. Since the previous owner changed the drivetrain couldn't he have possibly had a different cassette on it like a 11-36 or something?

He changed the shifters, he told me that much, and the ones on it now are 8 speed

Would be asking why the need to downgrade, were the old ones broken? as it seems like a lot of effort when swapping a cassette is easy. Thinking this is really something that can only be resolved by going back the the bike shop, and asking them what they did, why and how to get you back to where you were.

I wish I could! I got it from a guy on craigslist and he deleted the post once he had sold it. We had talked by phone and it was so long ago I have no contact information for him any longer. I even tried using google cache to find old versions of the listing but came up empty. Its driving me nuts

. . . too much effort to parse.

my goal in making this thread is just to find out if I might get better results from a different size or different brand of cassette. Would a 11-34 or 11-36 be closer to the nirvana I was describing? Could it have perhaps been a road cassette I had previously? What cassette should I try?

Installing one of those cassettes would make a lot of the rear gears easier than their equivalents on an 11-32, with the differences being greater on the easier gears. Is that what you're looking for? It sounds like your "favorite gear" may be a specific tooth count in the rear that there isn't an equivalent for on this new cassette, assuming that the old cassette was not 11-32. Which number rear gear was your favorite?

The easier gears aren't whats bothering me the most. My favorite gear to use on flats and small hills was 3 on left and 8 on right so 24th? It had more tension than its equivalent on this cassette (so more effort than this new 24th) but carried the bike further forward on each revolution. So would that mean I need to get a cassette with fewer teeth on the 8th speed?

Shimano Deore 9x MTB cassettes have fairly evenly spaced shifts.

11-12-14-16-18-21-24-28-32

SRAM 8x MTB cassettes have pretty much the same cogs except that it has a big jump 6-7-8th instead of smaller jumps 6-7-8-9th.

11-12-14-16-18-21-26-32

So it's hard to see how your problem is the gearing.

I have no clue if the original was the deore 9x mtb, I had bought it preowned after he had already swapped out the gearing, so its entirely possible he swapped out the cogs too (and likely, no? unless cassettes typically last in the many years between 2002 and 2014 when I purchased it)

from what im seeing in darths post, 28 is missing in the new one, and one of the others im looking at for 8 speed has a setup of

11-13-15-17-19-21-24-28

could 28 and a lower slightly higher jump like this possibly be the answer?

The 28 cog is the 1st, bottom, inner, easy end. All of these have an 11 cog at the hardest, top, outer, 8th position which is where you say you are having problems.

You need a better description of WHY you went from 9s to 8s. Was the shifter bad too?

With auto mechanics, they say to always get your old parts back. You own them.

Perhaps it would help people if you would better describe which gears you like, and which ones you think you're missing. You can use the numbers provided by Darth Lefty above.

This thread makes no sense. It is doubtful that the "problem" the OP describes (a loss of "nirvana") can be pinned down to anything other than the OP's subjective feelings. This is a rabbit hole and you'd have to be alice in wonderland to make sense of this.

Assuming that the mechanic did competent work (and nothing the OP has written suggests that the work was done improperly), then the repair did not ruin the OP's riding in any objective sense.

What's confusing to most people is changing gears shouldn't have an impact on your speed. You should be able to put out the same amount of power in a range of cadence from say 80 to 100 RPM. You should be able to find a gear to get your cadence in that range. If you are having trouble at higher or lower cadence the solution is simply to ride more and vary your cadence while riding. There is no physiological reason you should be slower with the new cassette you have unless there was an issue on the very highest or lowest gear but that doesn't appear to be the case here.

Learn the use the front derailleur and get out of the big ring up front when you are in the bigger rings in the back.

According to his posts, the prior owner and Craigslist seller is the one who changed the drivetrain. It was Performance Bike who changed his cassette.

I'm temporarily using an 8 speed drivetrain since my 11 speed shifter is broken. The cassette range is nearly the same (12-25 vs 12-26) but the spacing necessary for the 8 speed cassette removes most of the cogs I actually use. I'm uncomfortable, but not working any harder, and I'm no slower either.

Yeah, sounds like we've got a couple things going on here. Sounds like you've got a 3x8 set up and you've been using your easiest front gear for everything, going up as high as your hardest back gear. We call that cross-chaining and it's not a great thing to do. Try getting used to using your middle front ring. It's better to be in a middle front/low back combination than easiest front/hardest back. If you find that the low end of the middle front ring is tough on hills and things, that's when you can use your lowest front ring, but try to shift back up to your middle ring when you know you'll need more resistance instead of reaching for the hardest end of your lowest front ring. If you're dead-set on trying to use a single front ring for everything, you can put a cassette with a higher-tooth-count easiest gear (like 11-36) to get a bit more out of the lower range of your middle front gear.

This looks to be a flat bar bike, from my 2000 miles on one that was 28-38-48 up front and 12-25 in the rear, with some work on the engine (meaning the rider) you can mostly live in the 38 ring up front, and only use the 28 chainring for hills, windy days, or days when you have some fairly low heart rate target (zone 2 days). The 48 chainring got used for downgrades and tailwinds, or both. My trek 7200 came with something like an 11-34 mega range 8 speed cassette. and I swapped it out for a 12-25 and a new chain....and was much happier with that setup.

Bill

Am I understanding this correctly, you were using your smallest chain ring (gear) in front and the smallest or second smallest (depending on if it was 8 or 9 speed) in the rear? For the flats? I'm hoping I'm reading that wrong because that is a rather severe cross chain situation and makes no sense for riding on the flats. Another aspect of what you are saying that confuses me is that you have plenty of low gears for climbing but can't find a comfortable combination on the flats, yet you are looking at cassettes that all have 11, 12, 14, 16 and 18 teeth or 11, 13, 15, 17 and 19 teeth for the first five sprockets. The wide jumps between sprockets in wide range cassettes occur in the low climbing sprockets. Most riders on the flats would chose one of the middle sprockets in combination with the middle or large chain ring for the flats, so there really wouldn't be any difference in these middle "gears" whether you choose an 11-28 or an 11-32 cassette.

I ran it through Sheldon Brown's gearing calculator and your stock 28-38-48 crankset coupled with an 11-32 cassette should give you a nice range of gearing to choose from. At a cadence of 90 rpm, your speed would vary from 6.4 mph in your lowest gear to 31.7 in your highest with pretty even steps and considerable redundancy.

It also makes me wonder that you previously had one specific "favorite" gear for the flats and all of the currently available combinations are so horrible that they took several mph off your average. With 24 (3x8) or 27 (3x9) combinations you should be able to find something comfortable and functional at any speed. If the combination you are in is "too hard" to spin up, then shift down and increase your cadence. If it is too easy, then shift up and hammer a bit more. I've ridden a lot of bikes with drive trains ranging from old 2 x 5 to more modern 3 x 9 and 2 x 10 with many combinations of cassettes/freewheels and cranksets and haven't found one yet that I couldn't find a comfortable cruising cadence for the flats. Steep climbs and fast decents, now that's a different story.