Save your cash and get a rival cassette, it will work fine. The only difference will be a few grams of weight and lots of $$$ still in your wallet.

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Dave Stark
dreamcatcher@astound.net
USAC & USAT level 2 certified coach

Shimano cassettes are also compatible with SRAM

Not sure if you have 2 pairs of nice / race wheels but I love having an entire rear wheel for indoor trainer ride. Swapping tires and cassettes is a surefire way to demotivate yourself to sweat it out in the basement/garage.
I guess my point is - If you have 2 nice sets of wheels right now, comb the classifieds/ebay for a 3rd rear wheel. It can be a tank with the cheapest compatible cassette you can find. And you can either put a "trainer specific" tire on it or just hit the LBS for a commuter tire.

Better yet go online and save a few bucks on the tire.

Swap the cassette between wheels. Using 2 cassettes on the same chain over 1000's of miles is going to cause you problems eventually, probably at the worse possible time. It takes $10 in tools and 5 minutes.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

I didn't know it was bad..

One wheelset is a zipp 404, the other is my light alloy wheel which will be used for the trainer mostly. I would get a cheap cassette for it but I thought it might be a good opportunity to pick up an 11-27 or 11-28 to have access to a cassette for hilly courses.

So switching between tri cassettes wuth same chain is bad?

In general (dangerous words, I know) you can put a new chain on an old cassette, but you can't put an old chain on a new cassette. The cassette and chain wear together, the chain much faster, and they get along fine until the chain gets too far out of spec for the cassette. Changing the chain then puts everything back in harmony unless the cassette is very worn. Doing the opposite will put the chain way out of harmony with the cassette.

Again, in general. People are going to chime in here and say I'm wrong, they've never had problems, change your chain more often, blah, blah, blah, and there are always examples of a rule of thumb not working.

If was me (actually it is me, I swap between various wheels all the time) I would just swap the cassette. If you need to put a different size cassette on the wheel for something special, then consider how old the chain is and see if it works.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

Do you guys know if you had 2 cassettes with different ratios, for example a SRAM RED 11-23 and a 12-28, would you have to adjust the cable tension or micro adjustment at all or would they integrate without any adjustment. thanks!

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/iammikestar

I agree with Automatic Jack, new cassette and old chain don't mix well, but I replace my chain on old cassettes all through the season

I actually agree with you even though you must be wrong. I gt three chains to one ultegra casette. On the third swap the chain and casette have become shaped to each other and they both have to go. That comes out to about 7,000 miles or so. It's very sandy here and the stuff sticks like glue. So wear patterns may differ from other areas.

I have a different cassette on each wheel, one has an 11-28, the other an 11-25. I simply swap wheels from road to trainer. The only other thing I do is I replace my chain every 4,000 to 5,000 kilometers, sometimes a bit earlier.

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BC Don
Pain is temporary, not giving it your all lasts all Winter.

If you size the chain correctly for the 12-28 it "should" work fine for the 11-23. If they are exactly the same brand and model then no adjustment should be required. If it doesn't quite shift correctly all you need to do is change the cable tension a few clicks. (This is assuming that your min and max travel screws are set correctly)

As an example, the same cassette (Shimano 105 12-27) requires 4 clicks counter clockwise when I go from the original Speciallized wheels to the FC 404's. When I go back I go back 4 clicks clockwise.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"