Smoother Rear Mech Changes Is There Anything I Can Do?

[RecordAceFromNew]

Cheers this makes sense, I am a bit of a cycling noob. Just out of curiosity, due to my knee problem I have thought about changing the rear cassette for something with a bigger lowest gear cog as I sometimes ride the bike with my 19 month old daughter in a child seat. Even small hills kill me as I am not able to get off the saddle. My bike has a rear cassette that has 12 - 26 teeth and the front chain ring is 30/42/52 teeth. Anybody have any idea what size of teeth I could go upto on the rear cassette without having to buy a MTB type derailleur. I obviously know that I would have to get a new chain too.

According to your bike's original spec your rear mech is likely to be the RD4400, and it would be the GS variant, the spec is in here.

What the spec says is you are close to but not at the official limits. While usually such limits can be breached, what works or not are hard to forecast remotely, as it can be dependent on esoteric things such as rear axle to rear mech hanger distance e.g.

The largest Shimano cassette sprocket readily available in 9 speed is 34T. It will lower your lowest gear by 23.5%, which is quite a bit. If you can't make the Tiagra rear mech work with one after following this guide, then any Shimano mtb SGS (long cage) rear mech on this page would do, the cheapest only costs £12 incl p&p.

Theoretically to lower your gearing you can instead/also change the chainset to one that has a small ring of e.g. 22T, thereby lowering your lowest gear by 26.7% instead/additionally, but that is likely more troublesome due to chainline and mtb/road front shifter/mech compatibility issues, and more expensive.

 

[Cletus Van Damme]

Cheers RecordAceFromNew that is some very useful information

 

[mickle]

[QUOTE 1286560"]
Please don't question why I do something and then have an opinion on an answer that you think I gave. I don't quite know where you got the impression that that it should be done as some sort of regular maintenance programme. Anyways you have that much of an opinion on the matter why not try helping out the OP and try giving them advice?
[/quote]

Calm down. There was nothing substantially wrong with the rest of your advice to the OP - I pulled you up on just one point and I still contend that there is no earthly reason to oil limit screws.

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to enlighten me/us: Why do you oil your limit screws and how often do you do so?