wrenching advice - removing rusty cassette
Yo,
I am trying to remove a sprocket to replace a busted spoke.
The problem is that my cassette is a bit rusted. When I try to put the spline in, it gets in about .5 mm and just sits there. I checked, and it has the right number of splines. Is it possible that it's a slightly incompatible tool? I was under the impression that these shimano things were all basically standardized.
If I do have the right tool, then the problem must be the tiny amount of rust. I tried tidying up the area a bit with a file, but it did about as much good as a pope in a child molestation scandal. Does anyone have any good ideas for how to derust the area? Is WD-40 a no-no?
make sure you have the correct tool, they're not all the same... how many speeds is the cassette and is it branded shimano?
IF it's a match then i would just take some wd-40 or pb-blaster spray the lock-ring and then use a mallet to hit the lockring tool into place.
You'll probably have another issue getting the lockring off if things are that badly corroded...
Once you get it off you'll have contaminated the freehub and hub with wd-40, so those will have to be flushed and re-lubed and packed.
Hi Ben
Are you certain this is a cassette? Are you certain this is a Shimano part? If the tool isn't bottoming it doesn't sound like the right one for the job.
How many sprockets are on it? Do you know how old it is? What is the brand on the derailleur? If you carefully clean the retainer ring on the freewheel or cassette, can you make out any branding information?
Freewheels will tighten as they are ridden. Riding rough terrain can increase the tightness to absurd levels.
Cassettes are a little different as the retainer ring should not have this issue. That said early Shimano Cassettes (6 speed only I believe) used the sixth gear as a retainer ring. With these one uses two chain whips (or a section of chain and a vice grip) to spin the 6th gear anti-clockwise while holding the cassette in place with the chain whip locking another gear to remove it, then the cassette proper pulls off of the freehub. That said, most 6 speed Shimanos one sees are actually freewheels.
From your description I suspect you do have a freewheel though. MEC once had a good selection of freewheel tools. This is no longer the case. You could take your wheel to your local bike shop and ask if they have the tool. For about $20 you should be back in business. If they don't, any number of quality bike shops including Urbane Cycle have a good selection of tools for sale to walk in clients. I like Urbane as in my experience they will not intentionally make a sale that won't benefit you and the service counter clerk is a die-hard bike geek that loves to talk. Yes, he is our home grown Sheldon Brown.
Be prepared to put a long bar on that socket to get enough leverage to break it loose.
Speaking of Sheldon, you might glean his pages for tips on this operation.
http://sheldonbrown.com/articles.html
http://sheldonbrown.com/freewheels.html
http://sheldonbrown.com/k7.html
Cheers!