DaveB said:Ok so I have the house to myself for an afternoon's quality
study and I make the fatal mistake of "a quick look" at
Sheldon Brown's single speed page. The next thing you know the
house stinks of citrus degreaser and there's a 6 speed casette
sitting where the text book should be. So here's my two
questions which hopefully nobody will answer till after I've
actually done some study.
1, The bike to become the SS has a standard freewheel roadie
hub and casette. Do I need to replace the casette with
something that has one sprocket only, or can I remove the
sprockets from the casette and rebuild it with spacers where
the unneeded sprockets were?
I don't know the answer to that one.
Quoted message said:2, How the hell do you take apart a casette? Given Sheldon
says "You can often get a suitable number of spacers by taking
apart a couple of discarded, worn-out cassettes" I'm assuming
you can take them apart but I'm wondering how destructive you
have to be about it.
Quoted message said:Wrong terminology, I should have said I have a freewheel
(Suntour) not a casette. So how much does that change things?
No destruction should be necessary. I have an old dismantled
5-speed Suntour freewheel in my hand. You could once readily
buy individual Suntour sprockets to replace worn ones. On the
5-speed at least, the 2 small sprockets screw on, and the other
3 are on splines (and held on by the 2 screwed-on ones).
The screw-on sprockets get tightened by peddling force, so you
need to be forceful to take it apart. I use an old chain
wrapped around the large sprocket with the ends anchored in a
vice to hold the freewheel. Then unscrew the smallest sprocket
with a "bike hand" (piece of chain attached to a lever).
You may need to put a piece of pipe on the "bike hand" for extra
leverage. As a last resort, you can rotate the sprocket off
using a hammer and a soft drift (like a piece of hardwood).
But be aware that _too_ much force applied this way onto
individual teeth can snap them off.
John
