DIY cassette kit
A few hundred miles ago, when I was in the middle of running the UGB 200, my bicycle started to develop an annoying clatter whenever I went over a patch of uneven pavement. Over the next couple of weeks, I walked around the bicycle, tightening a fender here, taking a link out of the chain there, until I finally got to the cassette today and realized that it was shifting a little bit from side to side. And when I pulled the wheel out to remove the cassette and clean it before tightening down the lockring, I discovered, in quick succession, that
- the lockring was loose. Really loose, to the point where I could unscrew it by hand, and then
- the cassette had converted from a cassette to a pile of chainrings and spacers, with the bolt that held it all together floating loosely halfway into what used to be the cassette.
Hmm. That would certainly explain the clattering, as well as some of the floating shifts that would happen when I shifted out to the 32 or 11 ends of the cassette. And fortunately I had another cassette (from the 650b experiment; I pulled the cassette before I sold the wheelset so I could have a spare) so I could set this kit aside in case I want to reassemble it with a 36 tooth dump gear (35 inches instead of the ~40 inches I get with my current 48:32 dump gear) if I need a somewhat lower gear for riding my Canby-Timothy 300k after the snowline is comfortably above Barlow Pass (yes, yes, I suppose I could put a double or triple on the front and hand-shift it for alpine sections, but I did most of the Barlow 300k on my xtracycle (which bottoms out at 33 inches) so I should be able to do half the climbing with the somewhat more ridiculous lower gear the midlifecrisismobile has.)
And, in case you’re wondering, yes, I cranked the lockring about as tight as it can go on the ex-650b cassette.