Rear Cassette

[Anton]

Hi,
I need a little advice regarding my rear cassette and have a few questions. The rear cassette that I have got is a ten speed dura ace 12/27. After what seems a lifetime of saving my spare pennies I have just treated myself to a pair of carbon wheels. I have gone for the Mavic SLRs with the carbon spokes. Until I can afford an additional cassette I am planning on swapping my current cassette from my training wheels to the Mavics when I am racing. Now I am a little green regarding cycle maintenance etc and am learning bits at a time, my questions are as follow.

1. On the Mavic free hub there is a spacer that I think stays on the Mavic when I am swapping the cassette about. Would I be right in this assumption?

2. I have just gone to put the cassette back onto my training wheel and noticed there is no spacer at the rear of the cassette (the one before the cassette goes on to the free hub). I mentioned this to the chap at my lbs and he informed me there should be a spacer there. I think this is the correct advice as there was a space on the cassette for the spacer. I purchased a spacer and put my cassette back onto the training wheel. At this point I was quite pleased with my efforts, however I have just been out for a small ride to test everything out and I now can't change my gear into the small ring (10th/20th gear) I am assuming this is due to the spacer I have put on. Do I take the spacer off or do I adjust the gears so it will go onto the small ring? Not sure what to do for the best.

As usual any advice will be greatly received.

Thanks

 

[Steve Austin]

You need the spacer with a ten speed cassette. It sounds like its an indexing issue, not a cassette/wheel problem. eg the freehub is in a slightly different position on both of your wheels

 

[gavintc]

There are 2 possible issues here.

1. By placing the spacer before the cassette, you have moved the smallest 12t ring very slightly further away from the wheel. The rear deraileur will have been set up with limits for H and L which will prevent the deraileur moving out to engage the small ring.

2. The indexing has been messed up very slightly and you will need to adjust the indexing by a small amount to account for all rings on the cassette being in a slightly different place (slightly further out). At the deraileur, there is an adjuster on the cable - turn it a tad clockwise.