Originally Posted by andychrist

Which style Giro do you have, the 20 or the 26? Because the former is not only the better climber of the two, but actually one of the best climbers in the entire ‘bent world. I swapped out the original road gearing on my Giro 20 and put in a new 10-speed Deore 40-32-22 crankset and 11T-40T 9-speed cassette, which works fine on the new 10-speed chain. Added an extender to the RD to handle the larger inner cog.

Crankset ran me less than $50 from Merlin Cycles, new Deore FD around $25. SunRace cassette maybe around $30 or less, derailleur extender ~$6. Okay the three new 10-speed chains I needed weren’t exactly cheap but didn’t break the bank either. Anyway a lot less expensive over all than purchasing a whole new ‘bent and got the exact gearing I needed to scale walls. Have carried loads over a hundred pounds with that thing.

Beauty part was since I’d been running 9-speed triple microSHIFTers, didn’t have to modify that [expensive!] component of the drive chain to work with the new 10-speed FD; simply retained 9-speed gearing on the new cassette to maintain compatibility with the extant right hand shifter. (It’s okay to run a 10-speed chain over 9-speed gears because the inside spacing is the same, just the outer plates are thinner. OTOH you shouldn’t try to run a 9-speed chain on 10-speed gears, there isn’t really enough clearance.)

Bacchetta Giro 20 New Shimano Deore 10-Speed Crankset + FD, KMC 10-Speed Black/Silver Chain by andyXchrist, on Flickr

Bacchetta Giro 20 New SunRace 11T-40T Black Cassette New Shimano Deore 9-Speed RD New Black Derailleur Extender by andyXchrist, on Flickr

Newly Refurbished Bacchetta Giro 20 by andyXchrist, on Flickr