Will the Shimano HG41 match nicely with a Shimano Claris derailleur?

Question

I am almost buying a bike equipped with a Shimano Claris group, and I am particularly fond of big hills. So I found lying around my place a new cassette HG41, 11-34 teeth, which is allegedly for MTB. Will the big cog adapt ok with the short road derraileur? Both are 8 speed.

I know Shimano has some compatibility charts around, but I couldn't really figure it out by myself. Maybe something related to too much caffeine right now.

Emílio Dolgener Cantú · Accepted Answer

In short: Yes.

I bought said bike, and tried the new cassete. It works on both big and small front rings, but the derailleur arm gets very very stretched on the big one. My opinion on this is that the 32 teeth maximum limit has a bit of a safety margin, so if in the next 100 km something bad happens, I'll update the answer. Otherwise, problem solved.

And I will try to avoid using that low gear, unless necessary.

Also, here is the resulting derailleur position on the worst possible scenario, which I avoid:

Niall · Answer

I've also done same with a Claris groupset and Shimano Hg41-8 11-34 Mega-Range cassette.
Twice, one on a Winter wheelset and the other on a 3-Season wheelset.
But for the love of God, that chain and cassette look very gunky so degrease and clean up that mess! : )

Vladimir F · Answer

It depends on the type of Claris you have. Not all Claris real derailleurs are equal. The compatibility can be found in Shimano product descriptions where the recommended range is written.
The current line is Claris R2000. It comes in two variants. Short cage RD-R2000-SS and medium cage RD-R2000-GS.
The difference is not big, the short cage has a sprocket size range 25T-32T and the medium one 28T-34T.
The conclusion is that a 34T sprocket will likely work for both, but for the medium cage derailleur the shifting is guaranteed to be good while for short cage it might be just acceptable.
Theoretically, one could even think of trying a 36T cassette on the medium cage derailleur, but there is none such 8-speed cassette available as far as I am aware.
BTW, it is not very easy to recognize which of these two one owns if it is not explicitly written in the bike description. They often just write Claris RD-2000.

Will the Shimano HG41 match nicely with a Shimano Claris derailleur?

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