aaronmichael

A friend and I are planning on doing a trip from Long Beach, CA to Oceanside, CA coming up soon. It's about a 75 mile ride. I'm going to be riding my late 80's or early 90's 14 Speed Trek 1200. I'm a bit worried about the gearing ratio though for the hills that we're going to have to climb. They're nothing extreme but I'll have a rear rack with some bags. I'm wondering what's going to be easier, switching out the crankset for a triple or attempting to find another cassette that has a higher tooth count on the low end. With both I'm worried about compatibility issues. My front derailleur is a braze on Shimano 105 and the rear derailleur is a 105 as well. Will adjusting the limit screws on the FD allow me to use all three rings if I switch to a triple? Will the 105 RD be able to accommodate a larger tooth count cassette? Even if switching the cassette did work, I may have a hard time finding a correct one. I'm almost 100% sure its a Uniglide cassette. Or maybe I could find another small ring for the front that has the same BCD. Any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

Homebrew01

What is your current gearing ? Do you have an idea of how much lower you want to go ? Are you sure it's a cassette and not a freewheel ? Indexed or friction shifters ?

Fox Farm

Visit a good LBS who will look at your setup and tell you what is best. You likely have a 53/39 on the front, so you would want a mountain bike rear cassette and possibly will need a rear derailure with a long cage and of course a new chain. Your 7-speed set up is pretty dated by today's standards however... You could go to a triple but then a new front derailure and maybe bottom bracket, chain, etc. I might suggest the mountain bike rear cassette and derailure route. A 12-32 cassette... You can then easily swap them off and replace with your flatter-land set up. Before compact cranks came into being, I would see many people choose the bigger cassette and derailure change on the big hilly century rides. Some folks said that they simply swapped these parts from their mountain bike. I would suggest some testing and trial rides before you set out on your intended trip. Never try out a new set up on an adventure or race, so to speak.

merlinextraligh

Switching to a triple will cost you significant money: new crankset, new FD, newe brifter, new chain, new rear derailleur. No way it's worth putting that money in that bike.

You can go to a 32 tooth rear cog, with a Shimano mountain bike derailleur (make sure its high normal) a new cassette and a new chain.

Or you could go to a compact crank, which will only require the crank itself.

Campag4life

As Merlin stated.
I endorse both compact but with slightly bigger small ring aka 36-38t AND a bigger cassette in back for a recreational rider who does have to get up the steep stuff on a long hard ride. Triples btw are great but to retrofit a bike, it will be a bit pricey...but perhaps no more expensive than changing to a compact crank plus cassette. Best bang for buck OP...is just change your rear cassette and rear derailleur with a longer cage...sometimes latter isn't required for decent but not perfect shift quality in all gear combinations.

Phil_gretz

I used to live in Orange County. If you're riding down PCH, the hills aren't very long, but the grades can get steep ~10 degrees or so for as much as a 1/2 mile. I wouldn't ride that loaded without gearing down in the 30-35 gear inch range.

If you're running Uniglide, you'll be limited in availability of cassettes. I think that Sheldon Brown had a write up on converting cog splines. I've not done it, but you can modify the spline grooves on the cogset to permit mounting on the uniglide freehub, but you'll need to retain the outer cog, which is your lockring. It's a bit of a pain, but skill with a dremel tool will get you through.

Another option is to swap in a different rear wheel and derailleur. Keep the same axle spacing and number of cogs, but use a hyperglide freehub, and your choice of cassette.

Or another option...can you borrow another bike from someone, one better suited to touring, maybe even a rigid fork mountain bike? That'd have the gearing, and you coulld transfer your racks and panniers and such. Just a thought.

Or...to swap out a triple up front is an option, assuming that you're 105 rear can take up the extra chain on the smallest ring. I have run modern Tiagra road long cage derailleurs with touring 48/36/26 and 11-32T 9-speed setups, so it's possible. You'd need to swap chainrings (and bottom bracket), front derailleur (to a triple) and chain. If you're running downtube shifting (as I'm guessing you are with Uniglide), then your left friction shifter should handle the triple range fine.

Find a triple like a Sugino Impel (cheap MTB) and a Shimano cartridge BB. That would work...

Banzai

Older bike: crank is your best option to change.

Newer bike: cassette is your best option. 10 speed wide-range cassettes really did change the game. On an older 6-speed system, unless you wanted a ridiculous jump somewhere, your cassette was either biased high or biased low.

Sidney Porter

My understanding the long cage is for chain wrap, think small small combination. It doesn't automatically allow a larger rear cassette. It is the shape size of the parallelogram that determines max rear cog size. But you are correct that most mountain RD will handle the larger rear cogs but it is the parallelogram rather than the cage length. But a mt rd has both because they need to handle the small small that a triple would have on a typical mtb.

For comparison if you look at a road bike with a triple in front. They will have long cage road RD to handle the small - small combo but the max cog size in the back still seem to be limited at the 27 or 28 range.

Then again I am not an expert on this so I could have it backwards.

aaronmichael

Thanks everyone for the responses! I've read them all but there were a lot of them so I'll read over them again. The good news is that I work at a small bike shop and therefore have access to lots of spare parts and can do my own work. Here's some more information on the bike.

- 105 Downtube Shifters Indexed or Friction (Absolutely a dream by the way.)
- 52/42 Crank
- 13-24 Cassette
- Non integrated BB (I enjoy taking it apart and re-greasing!)
- 105 RD Short Cage (Has "6S-7S SIS" imprinted on it.)

I believe the gear cluster on the back is technically a cassette but being of the Uniglide nature, the last cog is the lockring. It's my understanding that this was how cassettes worked at first rather than have a spare lockring that screwed into threads on the inside of the freehub body.

I have a 6S mountain bike gear cluster that would be perfect but I'm not 100% sure it's Uniglide and if it is, I'm not sure how that would work on a 7S freehub body.

Banzai

You should be able to find a double crankset in 110BCD and custom size the rings in 34-46, or 36-46, or 36-50. (I hate 34-50...the jump just starts to get stupid.) That setup will be compatible with your existing equipment. Only problem is that you can't go down to an 11t cog, which means you'll be undergeared on the fast end.

Fundamentally, your situation with a 6s freewheel and 13t rear cog at the small end is exactly why triples were invented. Since you can run the front shifter in friction, you will need a new FD, and maybe a new BB spindle to get the chainline right.

Clem von Jones

On Shimano hubs it's easy to convert the uniglide freehub to a modern 7 speed hub. You probably also have space enough in your frame for a modern 8-10 speed hub which are a few--maybe around 7--millimeters longer . If you have a bicycle collective in your town they'll likely have a box full of modern but used 7 speed freehubs to replace your uniglide. You can also find 8-10 speed freehubs for sale online. For older bikes it's probably worthwhile to stick with 7 and 8 speed cassettes, that way you can retain use of your original derailluers, crankset, and chains. Now that Shimano has reissued 8 speed STI shifters (named Claris) you'll have that option too. You'll need two cone wrenches (15mm and 17mm), an 8mm hex wrench, and some bearing grease. When you pull out your axle try and keep the same ball bearings on their respective sides instead of mixing them together. It sounds more complicated than it is. The trickiest part of it all is getting the perfect amount of tension on the races and bearings during reassembly but you can gauge it by spinning the wheel while holding the axle. You'll feel the friction and play or lack thereof.

Seattle Forrest

Cassette. And legs.

ericm979

IRD makes wide range 7 speed cassettes.

carpediemracing 

If your mtb gear cluster is a freehub then you can just use whatever cogs and slip them onto your road bike hub. An old bike shop (the one you work at?) might even have a box of such cogs laying around. In general, if I recall correctly, those cogs were basically the same thickness, just the spacers were different. You may be able to buy a few cogs from a QBP or similar, I don't know if they are still available.

You have a 13-24 so it should be 13-15-17-19-21-24. If you want you can try to get some lower gear cogs, maybe 20-24-28, if they're available from somewhere. You need to find someone with a lot of stuff like that from the old days.

As pointed out you can easily change out the freehub body to a modern Hyperglide one. This opens up your options immensely as you can get a stock cassette. You'll need to replace your chain if it's still a Uniglide or other non-HG type chain because HG cogs, with their ramps, require you to use a HG chain (they have hardened pins, else the chain breaks pretty quickly).

I'm pretty sure that if you get 7s or more that the cog spacing is narrower than 6s. I'm also pretty sure that you couldn't get 6s HG bodies (well I think they were the same width but the cogs came in 7s cassettes... I may be wrong of course). Anyway the point is that if you get anything but the same spacing as 6s then you'll have to figure out a way to get the derailleur to index properly (typically by mounting the cable "wrong") or you'll need to use it in friction mode.

You'll probably need a wider axle and a spacer depending on what width freehub body you can get. This would be pretty straight forward if you have a few spacers and such laying around, it could be a real pain as well. In a shop you'll probably have gobs of axle spacers in all different widths as well as a truing stand, so it should be easier than if you were trying to do it at home.

Your crankset should be 130 BCD so you can use a 38T on that crankset (the smallest ring that will fit on a 130). Get a cheap chainring.

Depending on how much gear you're carrying on the rack and in your bags a 38x28 should give you something usable for the hills (just guessing based on riding on the PCH south of Oceanside). This is if you're carrying 10-15 lbs so not very much. If there are a bunch of Torrey Pines type hills then I'd look into more drastic gear options, like a compact crankset. Maybe you have a take-off crank at the shop, meaning something a customer left there to "pay it forward" so to speak? I know that I've asked customers if they wanted their old parts back and many of them will say no. I've also bought parts from shops and told friends to ask for such parts from shops. For a shop it's usually found money since they already made their margin on the parts/labor from the original repair.

As far as gearing goes I did a loaded tour using a 48/34 x 14-24 and it was okay. I rode about a 21 lbs bike and carried perhaps 30 lbs of stuff in panniers, a handlebar bag, seat bag, and on top of the rack. I wasn't very strong (I was 14 years old), I didn't have clipless, but it was manageable. A 28 would have been nice and I'd probably have used a lower gear had I had it on one particular climb.

I hope this helps. Good luck and let us know what you do and how you did it.

Dean V

If it is just a one off trip with a friend I would just ride what you have. It is surprising how high a gear you can get up a hill with and even if you can't it doesn't matter does it? Just get off and walk.