[PepperJester]

Does any one make a good full (or mostly) spidered 10 speed cassette around the 11-28 gear range? I have a 105 cassette now and the spider only covers the three largest cogs. The middle to bottom of the cassette, where I spend most of my time on course on, and in during gate starts is non spidered and thus obliterated my free hub body.

Don't think I can justify those crazy expensive sram powerdome cassettes, so hoping for a more economical solution.

Thanks!

 

[canadmos]

The ten speed Deore cassette on my fatbike is all pinned together. But it is 11-36. After two winters of riding it still comes off easily with no fuss or scoring on the hub. No little spacers to roll away either.

 

[Jm_]

Does any one make a good full (or mostly) spidered 10 speed cassette around the 11-28 gear range? I have a 105 cassette now and the spider only covers the three largest cogs. The middle to bottom of the cassette, where I spend most of my time on course on, and in during gate starts is non spidered and thus obliterated my free hub body.

Don't think I can justify those crazy expensive sram powerdome cassettes, so hoping for a more economical solution.

Thanks!

First of all, no, for years shimano has loved the cassettes that dig into the splines. This is their trademark. Full-spidered cassettes became a thing when SRAM actually gave us an improvement after years of this hammering cassettes off bullshit.

There are almost always 11-28 cassettes available, it's a popular road-size for Jr racers and can almost always be found. I have several, ultegras, 105s, etc. These all have at least multiple gears on carriers, usually the higher end, the more gears on carriers. I run these in the summer-time as my commuting drivetrain on my fatbike until I totally kill the component, I have several backups and when I run out of those, I'm on to old XTs. Since these are "old" obsolete sizes, you should be able to find some of the higher end ones cheaper, like Ultegra here.

And unless it's the x-dome stuff, I stay away from lower end SRAM cassettes, while I love my X01s immensely, I've been burned by their lower end stuff too many times.

The freehub mech basically becomes a "wear item" like your cassette when using an aluminum freehub. Either deal with it or get a steel one. It sucks but yeah, this is why SRAM 1x11 was so damn revolutionary. This is why my 1x10 drivetrains are my "crap" drivetrains that I'm slowly killing by commuting.

It's a nice little touch how shimano makes those last two gears that are furthest away from the hub totally "loose", right?

 

[PepperJester]

yep, I kinda figured I was more or less out of luck, but you never know until you ask.

I think Hope still makes steel freehubs so I'll grab one of those.

 

[jonKranked]

there's this...

https://www.sram.com/sram/mountain/products/xg-795-mini-block-cassette

but it requires a special hub.

 

[rockofullr]

it requires a special hub

Did you expect any less?

 

[Gary]

First of all, no, for years shimano has loved the cassettes that dig into the splines. This is their trademark. Full-spidered cassettes became a thing when SRAM actually gave us an improvement after years of this hammering cassettes off bullshit.

Alternatively
Shimano stuck to using a stronger heavier metal for the HG freehubs and cassette spline system they actually designed while every other company and their dog started making theirs out of cheaper softer Aluminium/Aluminuminum in the hope dumbasses would buy their slightly lighter hubs.

An Alu shimano patern freehub body is actually a pretty fucking retarded idea

#PickaCassetteManufacturerAndBeAdickAboutIt

still makes steel freehubs so I'll grab one of those.

This ^^

 

[Udi]

Shimano stuck to using a stronger heavier metal for the HG freehubs and cassette spline system they actually designed while every other company and their dog started making theirs out of cheaper softer Aluminium/Aluminuminum in the hope dumbasses would buy their slightly lighter hubs.

It's a huge mass difference, steel is a complete waste of weight in this application.
I own zero XD freehubs/cassettes right now, but the SRAM solution is the right solution (or close enough to it) - even with a spidered regular cassette, the small cogs eat the body on DH/gate starts. The other solution that is smart / optimal is the small steel inserts on aluminium freehub.

Making an entire large part out of steel when only a very small portion of it needs to deal with large point loads is stupid (thanks Shimano), just as stupid as designing a part that generates concentrated point loads when it doesn't need to (thanks again Shimano). Even making the entire part out of titanium as you've suggested isn't the right solution (coming from someone who paid for a Hadley with an entire Ti freehub), because it's an expensive material, much heavier than the aluminium needed for 95% of the freehub, and only needed to be used at the point/s of loading (pawl seats are the other point where an insert would be nice).

I didn't know that SRAM was the first to make a cassette with alloy spider though, are you sure @Jm_ ?
Interesting piece of trivia if that's the case, I thought early XTR / DA would have been first.

 

[Gary]

The HG splined freehub system was designed before your time @Udi. For road racing use and at a point in time where pride and what you ingested overcame any miniscule difference a steel freehub body made. (previous screw-on multiple freewheels were actually lighter, The advantage the freehub dsign brought was stiffer stronger hub design)

Please stop repeating passive aggressive "thanks" to Shimano for something they designed when you were in daipers.

 

[jonKranked]

The HG splined freehub system was designed before your time @Udi. For road racing use and at a point in time where pride and what you ingested overcame any miniscule difference a steel freehub body made. (previous screw-on multiple freewheels were actually lighter, The advantage the freehub dsign brought was stiffer stronger hub design)

Please stop repeating passive aggressive "thanks" to Shimano for something they designed when you were in daipers.

Hey Gary, tell us how you invented the velocipede again.

 

[Gary]

Hey Gary, tell us how you invented the velocipede again.

Once I'm through reading all your fascinating and informative posts.


Oh.. .seems I'm done already.

 

[jonKranked]

Once I'm through reading all your fascinating and informative posts.


Oh.. .seems I'm done already.

Sweet that means it's story time.

 

[Gary]

Brush your teeth and take teddy to bed. I'll be in soon Son.

 

[jonKranked]

Brush your teeth and take teddy to bed. I'll be in soon Son.

Are you still brushing your teeth with a stick and witch hazel?

 

[Gary]

it's ok. I'll be in soon Son

 

[Jm_]

I didn't know that SRAM was the first to make a cassette with alloy spider though, are you sure @Jm_ ?
Interesting piece of trivia if that's the case, I thought early XTR / DA would have been first.

No, I meant x-dome, having ALL of the gears essentially on one "spider".

Interesting how on my M9000 cassette they actually made some attempt to increase the number of gears on spiders, yet still have several of them. Like, you only have to buy the top of the line to have something that doesn't wreck your hubs bad!

 

[Udi]

Please stop repeating passive aggressive "thanks" to Shimano for something they designed when you were in daipers.

Bad design is a bad design, whether it happened yesterday or in the 18th century BC.
Thanks Shimano.

 

[Kevin]

If youre only gonna use it 4x id suggest getting the cheapest one you can find.

 

[SuspectDevice]

hard to beat the e.13 XD driver dh unit if you have a freehub body you can swap.

 

[Gary]

Bad design is a bad design, whether it happened yesterday or in the 18th century BC.
Thanks Shimano

Finish designing that time machine and sort it out. If for no other reason than to allow you to start typing "thanks udi"

 

[WestCoastHucker]

 

[PepperJester]

sigh. Canadian distributor for hope out of stock on steel free hubs. so much for buying local.

 

[Udi]

Have you actually looked for Ultegra cassettes?
I see Jm_ already made the suggestion, he's definitely onto it.

DA and Ultegra run the spiders much down lower than the top 3 cogs, I'm using a modified DA 10spd on my DH bike - it's down to 7 gears, and I've incorporated the smaller cogs from the 10spd XTR cassette (including changing the rotational timing to match) so that the gear jumps are bigger than the standard DA. Kinda irrelevant but there's a pull-ratio-modified shortcage X0 to traverse it.

Sadly DA skyrockets in value after production ends, but with a bit of searching on classifieds / ebay you'd surely find a reasonably priced Ultegra 10spd. I'd also look at the various XT 10spd offerings since there might be something useful, you can just cut lock out the larger gears via limit screws if needed (and cut down spider + gears + space out if weight savings matter). I think the road ones do spider further down though, so Ultegra likely best. I do find the bigger jumps on mountain cassettes are preferable for gravity/spring applications, which is why (though expensive) the SRAM DH cassette is a very optimised solution. You may not need this.

The other thing I thought is, if you have a destroyed alloy freehub body and are competent with handtools (or know someone who is), it wouldn't be hard to cut away lengths of say half the splines and replace them with hard steel parts. As long as the cuts are square (and mate well with the steel insert), apart from being a bit annoying to assemble, it shouldn't actually need permanent bonding - although personally I'd use a good 2-part epoxy, or even some actual mechanical retention to hold them there (mostly just for assembly and to avoid creaks later). I'd personally consider this if I had a freehub that was going in the bin anyway, done by the wrong person it may be dangerous, but I think if you "insert"ed only half the splines, you'd also have a fallback with the remaining stock ones.

If you don't care about weight then just getting the steel freehub will work fine.
To me that's the "I gave up and threw the towel in" solution, but I like light and strong. If you only need one it's easy.

 

[iRider]

The other thing I thought is, if you have a destroyed alloy freehub body and are competent with handtools (or know someone who is), it wouldn't be hard to cut away lengths of say half the splines and replace them with hard steel parts. As long as the cuts are square (and mate well with the steel insert), apart from being a bit annoying to assemble, it shouldn't actually need permanent bonding - although personally I'd use a good 2-part epoxy, or even some actual mechanical retention to hold them there (mostly just for assembly and to avoid creaks later). I'd personally consider this if I had a freehub that was going in the bin anyway, done by the wrong person it may be dangerous, but I think if you "insert"ed only half the splines, you'd also have a fallback with the remaining stock ones.

Good suggestion! You don't need to mod that many splines either, see e.g. the American Classic freehub.

 

[PepperJester]

Have you actually looked for Ultegra cassettes?
I see Jm_ already made the suggestion, he's definitely onto it.

DA and Ultegra run the spiders much down lower than the top 3 cogs, I'm using a modified DA 10spd on my DH bike - it's down to 7 gears, and I've incorporated the smaller cogs from the 10spd XTR cassette (including changing the rotational timing to match) so that the gear jumps are bigger than the standard DA. Kinda irrelevant but there's a pull-ratio-modified shortcage X0 to traverse it.

........

If you don't care about weight then just getting the steel freehub will work fine.
To me that's the "I gave up and threw the towel in" solution, but I like light and strong. If you only need one it's easy.

Well my current free hub is sliced to the point where the cogs are a few rides away from spinning free. So I have to get a new free hub body regardless. I thought that the Ultegra cassettes only spidered the largest 5, maybe I'l have to look at that again . My worst issues were just in 6-8.

 

[canadmos]

sigh. Canadian distributor for hope out of stock on steel free hubs. so much for buying local.

Seems to be common... I had a wheel rebuilt a few weeks ago and the wheel builder told me to just order it off of Jenson as there was no ETA for the hub I wanted from the distributor.

 

[William42]

if you're willing to spend a ridiculous amount, you can always get an omni racer or kcnc ti cassette

 

[kidwoo]

The 7sp sram dh stuff is probably the best bet going for the application. But that takes the XD hub and obviously isn't 10sp.

I bought a few 40 dollar low end sram casettes a while back and they don't finish those things properly. They're dangerous shifting under any kind of load.

When in doubt-ultegra.

 

[PepperJester]

new free hub body came in last week. Got that on the hub with no issues. Tried to remove the rest of my cassette from the old freehub, cogs right well stuck, hammering will be required. I think I can get it all freed up with out bending it, so might luck out and be able to save it.

However.. I ended up finding a larger issue..
cracked rim. I guess its good that it's still winter.

 

[Gary]

try gently prising each sprocket loose individually with a twisting action using a large flat blade screwdriver.
Usually works (and leaves cassette sprockets undamaged) better than a hammer .