Bigbus

That's really kind of you, but before I mess with the front rings I'm going to dig out a 13T I took off an old Ross RB a while back. It should fit the hub and it'll let me know if I'm on the right track. Heck, it might even be the answer I'm looking for. Thanks for the offer.

Bigbus

The Front setup is 52/36T and the rear cassette (free hub) all the gears fall apart when you remove it. Does that help? From the research I've done on the bike it seems that most of them came with a 5 spd rear for a total of 10 speeds and only the later 80's stepped up to the 12 spd which I have. With my current setup I cruise between 19 and 21 MPH (52/14) so whatever that makes my cadence. I just feel like I got more power left in my legs-- but not more speed.

3alarmer 

...the only cassette combinations I've seen that were not at lest in part riveted together were the old Uniglide freehub sets. Mostly it's hard to find those cogs and sets now, so I mostly replace the freehub with a newer Hyperglide from some scrapped out wheel at the co-op. But they do allow the most easily manipulated custom gearing if you have enough of the various cogs in OK shape.

If all the little raised channel keys on the freehub are the same width, it's Uniglide. If one of the key splines is narrower,, it's Hyperglide.

Shimano Cassettes & Freehubs

Miele Man

What holds the cassette to the freehub? Does the smallest cog screw on?

With a 36 teeth inner chainring I think you might have a lot of trouble getting a front derailleur to shift from that to a 56 teeth chainring. That's 20 teeth. The problem I see possible happening is the cage of the derailleur catching and jamming the chain before the shift is completed.

Can you post an image of your cassette on the wheel but off the bike? Also an image of your front derailleur might help.

I still think that your best bet would be to get a rear wheel that uses a Hyperglide cassette. You might be able to get a good used one at a bicycle co-op if there's one near you or perhaps used wheel at a bicycle shop.

Cheers

Bill Kapaun

It sounds like a Uniglide-
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/k7.html#uniglide

Assuming you have the screw on smallest cog- you may be able to find a smaller one on ebay etc.
Do you plan on changing your next smallest cog too, or living with a noticeably wider jump between 5 & 6?

You still haven't said what the largest cog is in the back. that can also make a difference regarding "how small" you want to go.
You have to plan your progression of cogs. If you were to go to a 12T (IF you can find one) you may have to change the 2nd cog (if you can find it)......

Homebrew01

Sure you can. No need for anything drastic.
When you are about to shift to a harder gear, hold off for a minute and pedal just a bit faster in the same gear. Repeat regularly, so you get used to spinning your legs at a slightly higher RPM.

3alarmer 

.
...I think if I could do 240 situps, my muscles and tendons in the hip and quad regions would be too tight to spin very fast. It's just a guess, because I've never done 240 situps.

Drew Eckhardt 

You're trying to solve a rider problem with equipment which will come at the expense of a lower gear for climbing or tighter spacing in the middle.

Eddy Merckx dominated the pro peloton with a 52x13 big gear, and you're no Eddy.

Learn to pedal faster.

On flat ground 52x14 is a 40 MPH sprinting gear requiring 1200 Watts and 30 MPH cruising gear at 500 Watts. 500W is more than Lance Armstrong could manage for 45 minutes with outlier genetics and the best doping program in cycling.

Down hill you'll be faster tucking.

Bill Kapaun

After recently acquiring a bike with a narrower saddle, I decided to give it a try "temporarily".
I'd lost close to 50 lbs. over the previous year and had a noticeable shrinkage of the posterior.
I'm sticking with it. I seem to get a bit more force AND cadence.
I raised the seat to accommodate the "less splayed" position of the knees.
I seem to spend more time in the "thrust zone" and less with the knee at max bend.
That's MAJOR to me with my bad knees. I've had to go to 165mm cranks to avoid knee pain.
It basically made me feel like I was spinning like I was 5 years ago. I'd probably lost 5 RPM on my cadence.

Miele Man

I've often wondered why bicycles are sold to the general public, and have a 53 teeth chainring and a 11 teeth cog. I think for the average person a 11, a 12, and a 13 teeth cog are too small. Heck even 52 x 14 is to high a gear for a lot of folks.

Cheers

Bigbus

Thanks for that link Bill, it really cleared up my issue. I'm posting the pics in the next box for everyone to see, but it appears to me it's a hyperglide from the late 80's.

Bigbus

I made a quick stop out on the road the other day and never even thought about down shifting to get started again and I was on the 52-14 gears. Flat ground and a slight push off and I was rolling again.

Bigbus

I'll accept the fact that it's a rider problem, but one that can be made simpler or solved with the right equipment and for me that is going to be taller gearing. I get a breathing rhythm going with my cadence and when I speed up my cadence it throws my breathing off and before I know it I'm boinking. Or is it Bonking? Ones a good thing and one is not so good...

Bigbus

Here's the culprit. 14/16/18/21/24/28. It's all held on the freehub with a threaded lock ring. The smallest gear (14T) has a built in spacer that snugs against the lock ring. Thanks to Bill's informational link, it appears this is one of the first hyperglide setups from the late 80's. Hope this answers everyone's questions. I have a 13T that will fit it and I'm going to try that when I get back after the holidays. Hopefully it's the answer I'm looking for. Thanks for everyone's help and great information.

Drew Eckhardt 

The general public pedaling 60 RPM thinks 52x14 (a typical big boom big gear) is too slow, and if you don't sell them something larger another company will.

Bike companies make more money from fewer SKUs. 11 and 12 cogs allow enough range you can have a fairly reasonable low gear and spacing starting with a 10 or 11, so that's all they make.

Now Campagnolo makes 12 speed with two options: 11-12-13-14-15-16-17-19-21-23-26-29 and 11-12-13-14-15-16-17-19-22-25-28-32.
I'd have to dig up old catalogs to count the 8 speed combinations - 12-19, 12-21, 12-23, 12-26, 13-21, 13-23, 13-26, 13-28 ....

I'm among the significant minority that wants one tooth jumps through the 19 cog which is unlikely to happen.

Miele Man

Ah, a fellow after my own heart. LOL

I have an MTB that I put a drop-bar and bar-end shifters on. It has a 24-38-48 triple crankset. Most of the time it wears 26" x 1.5" smooth tires. It has 9-cogs in back. That cassette was made up from two Sunrace 9-speed cassettes and is a 11 - 19 corncob. I love it on the gently rolling hills some of my routes have.

Cheers

Drew Eckhardt 

I rode 50-40-30 x 13-14-15-16-17-18-19-21 in the 8 speed era: low like 42x28 for mountain rides west of Boulder, CO and 13-19 straight block for plains east.

Currently it's 50-39-30 x 13-14-15-16-17-18-19-21-23-26, although I'm getting old and probably want a smaller third ring for long rides in the Santa Cruz and Diablo Mountains.

In 2016 I rode a 200 mile loop including Mt Hamilton and Mt Diablo. With the new bike lane on 580 it'd be cool to get back in shape and ride a bigger loop hitting the three highest paved peaks in the San Francisco Bay Area including Mt. Tamalpais. You want a lower gear for mountains when you'll be riding more than a few hours out and back.

CliffordK

I've often wondered why they sell gearing lower than say 42T in the front, and 23T in the rear to the general public.

The reality is that when one moves from 2x5 to 2x11 speeds, then one can do three things. Add more sprockets at the high end, add more sprockets at the low end, or fill in the middle (or a combination of the three).

A person may not use those huge sprockets a lot, and likewise may not use the low gears a lot, but it is nice to have a few extra shift points on either end.

There is also some debate on whether the general public actually needs to be spinning at 150 RPM just to go down the street at 10 MPH.

Not everyone spins at high speeds. And, for speeds less than 20 MPH, or perhaps less than 25 MPH, it really doesn't matter. It is really only under the high speed/high power situations when there is little choice other than increasing cadence to increase power (one can't get unlimited power with larger gears).

And, of course, what goes up must come down. So, those low gears to get up the hills, but who doesn't like to bomb down a hill occasionally. I still have a goal of 55 MPH (just shy of that). And, I'm not going to bomb down a hill at 55 MPH with 50x14 gearing, and not spin out.

Miele Man

Back when I first thought about getting 9-cogs instead of 7 cogs I thought that I'd set up my cassette like a regular 7 cog system I normally use and add two bailout cogs. that has worked quite nicely for those times I've done unexpected shopping and then had to ride up a steep hill with a strong headwind.

I also like that I can if I want to have a 9-speed cassette with a high gear of 14 or 13 and my regular low gear I'd have on my 7 speed but like Clifford K said have closer space gears between that high and low gear.

I remember back in the early 1980s riding from Toronto Canada to Lindsay Canada and using a 15-gears MTB with 2.25 knobby tires to do that. I'd be going up a hill and shift into a lower gear and then spin out until i slowed down to that gear because the jumps between gears on that bike were so big. I really like it when I got the 7 speed cog set.

I can see having more gears in order to have smaller jumps between gears. I know a lot of bicyclists don't need a 52 x 13 or smaller gear combination. Heck a lot of them would be far better served with Junior gearing.

What is nice is that now there are so many choices in gearing.

Cheers

3alarmer 

...if you already have that Hyperglide freehub on your wheel, I'm pretty sure you can just buy a current Hyperglide cluster in the 7 cog version made by somebody like Sunrace that will both be all new cogs and have something on the order of a 12 or an 11 smallest cog in the set. The only thing that might be an issue is the width of the freehub, but if that's a 126 spaced rear wheel, the 7 speed cog sets should fit. Shimano also still makes and sells 7 speed cassettes.

It's been a while since I worked on one of those, which is why I'd advise measuring the width of the freehub body before you spend money on a cassette. If the set is too wide by one cog width, you can still use it by leaving off the smallest cog, but since that's the one you want, it seems pointless to do that.

CliffordK

Do we have photos of the original hub/cluster?

I think those look like they came off of a freewheel rather than a freehub.

I am a little puzzled that frequently the freewheels have a progressive size of inner shoulders for the sprockets to mount on. Nonetheless, looking at the size of the 14T, I find it doubtful that an 11/12T sprocket will fit on that same freewheel.

And, since freewheels weren't fully standardized, it can be hit and miss whether parts will interchange between different freewheels. Generally not with cassettes.

I think at least one users on this board does frequently rebuild them.

While "Hyperglide" typically applies to cassettes, I think it can be applied to an indexed shifting technology as applied to freehubs too.

alcjphil

Looking at the "lock ring" in the OP's photo it appears to be a lock ring for a freewheel, not a cassette. Threads are in the inside of this lockring.


A cassette lockring looks like this: Threads are on the outside

rccardr 

Those are freewheel cogs.

pdlamb

Sounds like you need steeper, straighter, and/or longer hills.

HTupolev

Yes. In the context of cassettes, the switch from Uniglide to Hyperglide involved a change in the design of the freehub body. But in terms of how Shimano uses the terminology, Uniglide versus Hyperglide primarily refers to how the cogs are profiled to facilitate smooth shifting. An MF-TZ20 six-speed freewheel is a hyperglide freewheel, for instance.