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ive just bought a spare set of wheels to fit road tires to for my mtb and im wondering which cassette i should go with? ive injured my hand and had to have wires put in so untill they come out ill be just keeping my legs going on the trainer and then once im able to get back on properly ill be out on the road untill its fully healed, what sort of tooth ration should i go for? the standard on i have on for offroad is 12-36? what would you go for, for use on the trainer and road?
Theres not much to change really- its only the smallest cog thats going to matter and you can only go one peg smaller than the one you've got. What you could do instead is go for a larger big ring on the front - that would give you a better set of ratios on the road.
If you are wanting to look after the hand then not having to yank on the bars as you climb would be wise - so keeping a wide range on the back, rather than using a close ratio cassette would be smart.
On my hybrid bike I've done as you are going to do, and have two sets of wheels. One has off-road tyres and an 11/32 cassette, the other has road tyres and a 12/23 cassette. I find that on the road the closer ratio cassette gives me smoother shifts, and greater granularity to deal with small changes in terrain and yet maintain most efficient cadence. I've stuck with the standard 22/32/44 rings up front, and haven't run out of gears at either end of the spectrum yet. My XT RD takes the change in ratios at the back in its stride.
with the second set of wheels, gets some 700c rims on MTB disk hubs, rather than putting slicks on mtb rims - it keeps a wheel diameter closer to your fat MTB tyre so you get the best out of the gears
Its easiest for switching wheels back and forth if you use the same hubs for both sets to save having to adjust your callipers each time you swap (especially if they are IS mount callipers). If you can't get matching hubs then the the Disk Rotor Shims that Syntace make can be used to set the disk offset to match on each set