Swapping Wheels

Murnau

I've got two sets of wheels, one with deep rims for flat rides, and another pair of light wheels to get out into the hills. Ideally I'd leave the 12-27T cassette on for the C50s, and have a 11-28T on the light wheels to help me out on the hills. Is there any problem with swapping these around every time I want to do a particular ride? I'm not sure if it will matter that the cassette size is a big jump up. If it is an issue, and I settle for another 12-27T on the climbing wheels, should I replace both cassettes at the same time with new ones? Hope that makes sense.

dgunthor

having a 28T easy gear versus a 27T makes it 3.5% easier gear - not much of a difference really.

What about a 11-23 for the flat and 12-27 for the hills?

In any case you'll be wearing your cassettes out faster by using the same chain between them - it's not a huge job to swap the cassette over - that's what i'd do. i.e. just use one 12-27 cassette between the 2 wheels

slowbike

There is little problem in having 2 different sized cassettes on wheels for different purposes - you just need to ensure that the chainlength is correct for the largest and smallest cog - so in your case, the 28t and the 11t from the same cassette.
I wouldn't worry about cassette wear - providing you're keeping the chain & cassette clean then any extra wear will be minimal.
The only thing I can think of is that indexing may vary between wheelsets - but you'd have that issue if you swapped cassettes between wheels anyway - so a second cassette is just one less job to do.

It's far less job to switch a wheel than it is to mess about with a cassette swapover - so I'd use 2 of whatever cassettes you want...

markhewitt1978

I've found that if you swap wheels over the cassettes are ever so slightly misaligned.

Murnau

Thanks for the replies. I hadn't considered a dramatically different size of cassettes because I thought that I'd have issues with the gears needing to be indexed every time I swapped, but if I need to do that anyway then I take it there's no problem with having an 11-23 and a 12-27?

I'm pretty good at keeping everything clean, so hopefully won't have too much extra wear on the cassette / chain.

The Mechanic

I swap wheels on two of my bike all the time and have never had to readjust the gears.