They say third time's a charm, and that was the case recently with my Falcon commuting bike. On my first attempt at going to work, I was riding along when there was a loud noise. Being a veteran of many such noises, I immediately recognized it as a broken spoke. I considered for a moment wobbling along to work with it, but I wasn't very far from home, so I turned around, dropped it off and got a substitute bike. I've got a lot of bikes, so I can repeat the process until they are all broken if I don't feel like fixing them right away.
Which I didn't. The broken spoke of course was on the rear wheel, freewheel side, so it was going to take a fair bit of mucking about to fix it. Besides, I still had several useable bikes. After a week or so of riding substitute bikes, I decided it was time to tackle fixing it. I took it all apart, replaced the defunct spoke, and put it in the trueing stand, thinking all I had to do is get the tension on the new spoke right, and all would be well. Not so. When new spoke was tensioned correctly there was still a significant wobble in the wheel. So I would have to twiddle a few more spokes. This is when I found that every other spoke was completely frozen in place and nothing in heaven or earth could move it. Or more correctly, twisting the nipple ended up twisting the spoke as well with no independent movement of the nipple.
So now I had a moral dilemma. The Donohue Prime Directive is never to dispose of anything that could possibly be made useable, usually with the judicious application of duct tape. Here, duct tape would not suffice, and there would be a fair amount of expletives involved were I to try to fix it. Meanwhile, I had several perfectly good spare wheels that were just looking for a raison d'etre. I actually have a lifetime supply of spare wheels, since unlike other parts they don't wear out, and except for crashes and being eroded by sand in the winter would likely last nearly forever. It would be sad were I to go to my grave riding crappy wheels when there were good ones still on the shelf. So I decided to disregard the Guiding Principle and just throw the wheel out. I has several changes of heart along the way, so to seal the deal, I got out my trusty hack saw and cut the rim in half. Now there was no going back. Though I did save the hub, why I know not, since I have no plans to ever build a wheel again.
This gave me a rare opportunity to clean all the accumulated crud off the cassette before I transferred it to the new wheel. So I put squeaky clean cassette on new wheel, went through the gears a couple times to make sure the indexing was still right, and I was ready to hit the road.
So, for the second time I set off for work, with my new wheel and clean cassette. First thing I noticed was that it seemed to skip a bit in shifting. Have to play with the adjustment, I thought. The next time, going up a hill it really skipped badly. This time I stopped and noticed that the chain was happily lodged BETWEEN two cassette cogs. Then it dawned on me that I had put a seven speed cassette on a wheel that probably was designed for a nine speed. It seemed to me when I put it on there was a bit of play, and this was an understatement. There was so much play that the chain pushed the cogs aside and was nestled between them. Didn't even consider soldiering on this time, and was beginning to think this would have to be another case of Susan to the rescue. But, again I was not too far from home, so I put the chain on a middle cog and figured it would stay there as long as I didn't shift. This worked well, and I got home, switched steeds, and off to work again. By this point I was feeling like the Pony Express.
I got my calipers out and determined that new wheel cassette was in fact several millimeters wider than the old one. What to do? Well, I also have a lifetime supply of cassettes, maybe two lifetimes, and I considered replacing it with one with more speeds. But then I would have to get a new derailer/shifter or forgo indexing. Indexing on this bike had not really worked for most of the years I rode it, and when I finally got it to work, I was a happy man. So neither alternative sounded very good, and I decided to try to make the seven speed cassette work. Each of the gears has a spacer between them, so I took a spare one and added that to the collection. That almost worked, but it wasn't quite thick enough and there was still play, which I figured would eventually lead to cassette unraveling in some inconvenient place. Since I do not yet have a cell phone with Susan's number on speed dial, I would have to throw myself on the kindness of strangers. So I went looking around for another spacer. Another inter-gear spacer would be too thick, so I went through my collection. My collection included a SIX speed cassette, which astounded me since I didn't think cassettes were invented until bikes were at least in the seven speed range. Fortunately this one was provided with a very thin spacer, so I cannibalized it and added it to the mix. Tightened it all down and it seemed fine, but since this was sort of a gerry rigged concoction, I wasn't real confident in it actually working.
But third time out, I actually got to work and back without incident, and repeated the feat several times since, so I think I'm OK.
Please send corrections, additions, comments and praise to