7 Speed Cassette on 9 Speed Wheelset

[bebop86]

So I ruined my rear wheel by getting it caught in a train rail a few weeks ago, and some guy is selling a nice set of wheels... Front wheel is Bontrager Select, and the rear is a Bontrager Race Lite. Now, I understand these are 9 speed wheels, but will they fit a 7 speed cassette? I'm using full shimano 600 and my cassette is a 7-speed 13-28 and i love it so much, but will it fit?

Also! My shifter is sorta broken, it will shift up when i'm climbing hills and that stinks, and it also won't go into friction mode. does anyone have a link to a 7 speed indexable downtube sram or shimano shifter?

 

[dabac]

.. I understand these are 9 speed wheels, but will they fit a 7 speed cassette?

the 9-spd body is longer than the 7-spd, so there will be some issues. The centre hole is the same, so if you're able to round up some spacers the 7-spd cassette should sit nicely on the 9-spd body. Another issue is that you probably have longer axle on the new wheel. Some say this is critical and that you need to have the frame spread to accomodate the longer axle. Me, I'm not so sure. I've used such a setup for two years and bad things because of that have still not happened. Caution is advisable anyhow.
Another thing is that with the wider body your wheel might not be centered properly. This might require re-dishing, or you might get away without it.
The slickest thing IMHO to do in a situation like this is to fiddle around with the spacers between the cones and the locknuts. Often there are more room between the locknuts than the dropouts really need. Some tweaking there might just let you keep the old length-over-locknut or get the wheel centered without resorting to re-dishing.

 

[daveornee]

So I ruined my rear wheel by getting it caught in a train rail a few weeks ago, and some guy is selling a nice set of wheels... Front wheel is Bontrager Select, and the rear is a Bontrager Race Lite. Now, I understand these are 9 speed wheels, but will they fit a 7 speed cassette? I'm using full shimano 600 and my cassette is a 7-speed 13-28 and i love it so much, but will it fit?

Also! My shifter is sorta broken, it will shift up when i'm climbing hills and that stinks, and it also won't go into friction mode. does anyone have a link to a 7 speed indexable downtube sram or shimano shifter?

If your cassette is HyperGlide, it will fit with the addtion of a 4.5 mm thick spacer. Most 7 speed Shimano wheels have a Over Locknut Dimension (OLD) of 126 mm, while 9 speed is 130 mm OLD. If you ride a steel framed bicycle you can safely spread the rear drop outs 2 mm per side.
Bontrager Lite is a good racing wheel..... but why don't you find a "new" rim with the same Effective Rim Diameter (ERD) and same number of spoke holes and just move the spokes over, tension, true, spoke align, stress relieve & ride?
7 speed shifters are getting harder to find. They show up on auction sites, flee markets.... and in dusty old boxes in many bicycle shops. You will want to read an article on the subject of upshifting while riding up hill:
http://sheldonbrown.com/autoshift.html

 

[bebop86]

cool article, thanks. i'd like to put the money into just getting a new rim, but $100 for a brand new wheelset isn't bad at all I think. and the front one needs some truing, so i think i will just bring everything into a bike shop when i've gathered everything and let them have a whirl with it. also, i have located a dura ace 7 speed indexed shifter, like the one i have now, so hopefully that'll be done done. and thanks again for the article, when my bike is up and running i'll grease that up and we'll see how it works.