Okay got it. So I luckily found the 11-34 12 speed cassette but 12 speed chainrings are pretty much non existent at this point I think.
My other option is for me to use my old Bianchi with 10 speed Campy. This bike already has 50/34 chainrings, came that way. Cassette is 12-25 but I was able to find a 13-29 Campy 10 speed cassette for about 60 bucks with free one day shipping on Amazon. I called Campy USA and I was able to confirm that this cassette is compatible with my rear mech.
Thoughts on the Campy 10 speed 50/34 with the 13-29 setup? Thank you.
BTW Campy USA was awesome. A real person picked up, no emails, no texts, just a real person haha.
The campy setup isn’t any better than your current gearing, and would be worse than your current crankset with the 11-34 cassette.
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Cory is correct. You are better off with the 52/36 with 11-34 than the campy.
For any of these comparisons, use the gear calculator. Whatever setup gives you lower gear inches or lower gear ratio (two ways of looking at the same thing) is going to be better for hills.
If you want better gearing than that, and the Shimano rings are really not available, your only bet would be to find third party chain rings in stock or swap to a whole new crank.
Changing cranks might need a new bottom bracket and compatibility is a nightmare. Plus you need very specialized tools. Don’t do it yourself.
However, third party chain rings might be dosble.
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I bet even with 50/34 and 11-34 gearing you’ll be grinding away when the grades are over 12% grade or so. So not overkill if people are expecting 10%+ grade climbing for any sustained period of time.
For example I recently had a day trip to the mountains and the second climb was 8% avg with many sustained 10-12% sections. I had the equivalent of a 50/34 and 11-28 and was wishing for 1-2 more gears on the steeper parts while averaging 4.4wkg on the climb.
This site is great for comparing different cassette / chain ring options against your current setup: http://www.gear-calculator.com/
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Thank you, going to play around with this calculator.
Appreciate the comments everyone.