longivas

Gear issue.
I am campy centaur. My crank is a triple 53/42/30 – my cassette 13/29. Now with age, these long 9 to 12/13% climbs are getting to me. Do you think that keeping my centaur triple and replacing my cassette and derailleur with a SRAM XX 11/36 can work?
A couple of my LBS are not interested and want to sell me a whole new gruppo but I found a mechanic who tells me it will work (from Campy triple, new Sram XX derailleur, new XX 11/36cassette and keeping the Campy shifters) Any comments?
Thank you for help

ReynoldsLugs

you might consider just changing the crankset to a Sugino XD - 24-36-46. You'll get a better gear range and won't mess up your shifting. I ran this set up (triple, 24-36-46 with Campagnolo deraillers) very happily on a Rivendell for several years on the Death Ride.

DaveSSS 

The campy shifters do not have the proper cable pull for a SRAM RD, regardless of what Lennard Zinn says. SRAM RDs require a uniform pull of 3mm for every shift. Campy levers pull 2.5mm five times, 3mm twice and 3.5mm twice. After the first five pulls, you'll be far short of the required travel. J-tek makes shiftmate to increase the average pull, but the last two pulls are two large already, so it makes the first five better and the last four worse.

You shouldn't need a 52/11 top gear. I always used an FSA crank with 53/39/28 chainrings to add one more cog's worth of low gear without such a big jump to the little ring. You could go down to a 26 or even a 24, but eventually you run into the problem of the chain rubbing the tail end of the FD.

IRD makes a 12-32 cassette that might be worth trying, but I doubt it shifts quite as well as a Campy cassette.

AEO

cheapest way is to just switch the crankset to a 26/36/46 or 24/36/46 like reynolds suggests.
24x29 is quite similar in ratio to 30x36

Kimmo

You are not your groupset!

</Fight Club>

: p

Chris_W

Instead of changing the whole crankset, try just changing the inner ring from a 30 to 26 tooth to start with. It is by far the cheapest solution. You may not like the big 42 to 26 jump, the chain may rub on the tail of the front derailleur, or the rear derailleur may not have enough capacity to take up the extra slack. However, I'd bet that none of these will end up being a problem and you'll then have a decent gear for those gradients. If the chain then has a tendency to derail off the inside of the front rings when you downshift then add a chain drop prevention device - there are many available and all have been discussed here before. If you don't like this solution, then change your crankset to one of those suggested above. I would put using a large-range cassette as the least desirable solution because the jumps between gears is larger than is comfortable for road riding.