MarcoBianchi

Not a concern here in Spain, Im in a Decathlon shop right now, I can see Sunrace, Shimano and Decathlons brand BTWIN , 8s cassettes and 7s cassette and freewheel. 12.95 € the cheapest. Perhaps its true that 12/28 and 13/32,34 no narrow ratios, "road" ratio are not so easy to find in less than 9s cassette. Im a 8s fan too but my heavy body needs 13/28, in fact my only bike with 12/23 runs triple chainset.

letenn 

Amazon probably has them. That is where I get Sram PG-850 8 spd cassettes. They work good with shimano. I use sram chains too.

88Tempo

I received a brand new HG50 12-25 8 speed cassette in the mail today. I took a Dremel to the rivets holding it together so I could remove the 25 tooth and put the first 7 on my wheel. I used a thin spacer (1/16th" or so maybe slightly smaller) behind it to take up a small amount of play with everything put together and no spacer.
I had to adjust the derailleur swing for both high and low, but it shifted great both up and down the cassette while on the stand (RSX 7s brifters and Alivio derailleur) no road test yet.

I have a 7 speed cassette I can tear down for the spacers, but thought I'd try it after reading on Sheldon Browns site.
After doing that I hit a yard sale and found a fairly new 13-23 7s HG70 cassette on a 105 hub with a Mavic rim. I also picked up 4 more bikes.

Jeff Wills

I bet you can have a bike shop order what you want through Euro Asia Imports:
https://www.euroasiaimports.com/prod...peed-c1141.htm

It'll be pricey, though- they don't lower their prices to "clear out" old inventory.

Air-cooled VW's? My first car was a '71 Squareback, then I "graduated" to a '61 crewcab pickup. Working on bicycles was great training for working on VW's... very simple machines. Nowadays I drive a Camry: boring boring boring.

BritishV8

For my commuter: so far, I'm happy with the Sunrace 12-13-14-16-18-21-24 7-speed I installed in December. ~1200 smooth-shifting miles so far.

For my weekend bike: last night I purchased an Ultegra 12-27 9-speed, and I plan to run it as an 8-speed per Sheldon's "8 of 9 on 7" recipe. It's 12-13-14-15-17-19-21-24-27... and I'll try it without the 19 tooth sprocket. So, close ratio for flats and then one big jump to the granny gears. I don't know if that's a good idea...

First though, I need to swap a Hyperglide freehub body for the Uniglide one on my spare wheel. It's got a Wolber GTX2 rim and a tricolor hub.

skillasw

For the same reasons is why I stick 8 speed, the single cogs and custumability. Especial with the original 8 speed "letter' cogs, just like uniglide are super durable, and highly custumizable, you can even flip them around and run them a second time! I like building my own ratio's , I like power gears and climbrs but down use much mid range a ratio I'm using currently is 12-13-14-15-17-21-23-26, makes the 4 tooth gap no problem. I run and 8 speed on an 11 speed hub with 9 speed cogs that's 12-13-14-15-17-19-21-26, i love it when you I the the climber. I wonder why cassettes aren't like this they shift totally fine, I know some old suntour freewheels were.

3speedslow

Road Fan

I just found a bunch of Campagnolo 8-speed cassettes on Ebay.

mountaindave 

Reviving this thread as a certain something happened in the interim from the last post in 2018.

7/8s cassettes (and 7s freewheels) have slowly been dropped from productions lines and the global parts shortage seems to have accelerated (or exacerbated) this trend. With manufacturers struggling to keep parts for current groups in stock, I don’t see them scrambling to replenish 7s and 8s stock. We did a search on QBP last week and got a lot of goose eggs in return.

So I, for one, am hitting the panic button and have begun hoarding my favorite combos. (That actually requires buying two cassettes and hybridizing them as I need to customize things to get what I want because I’m weird). However, I can’t find any example of a cassette that starts with a 13t sprocket.

Freewheels are even worse…

One might think they could order 9s or 10s cassettes and scavenge the sprockets, but a few things make that challenging or impossible:

1. Sprocket thickness is thinner and can affect indexing (not an issue with friction shifters).
2. Overall width of the cassette is reduced so a spacer my be required to get the lock ring properly tight.
3. Many modern sprockets come on spiders so they aren’t able to be pulled apart and used with old 6s/7s/8s spacers.

So what are you doing as the end becomes nigh?

masi61

I hoarded some stuff a few years ago. I'm a Uniglide person when it comes to 6/7 speed. These are so da*n durable that all the extra spares are going to look cool in my vintage man-cave hipster bike shop I'm making. Honestly my main 2 road bikes are 9 and 10 speed cassettes. My commuter bike has Dura Ace 7400 seven speed uniglide cassette that I think i have quite a few backups for but again, these are very durable and seem to go for many, many 10's of thousands of miles.

rccardr 

1. Sprocket thickness is thinner and can affect indexing (not an issue with friction shifters). Buy a selection of thin spacers; they come as thin as .5mm
2. Overall width of the cassette is reduced so a spacer my be required to get the lock ring properly tight. Yes, this is often the case. Again, thin spacers do the trick
3. Many modern sprockets come on spiders so they aren’t able to be pulled apart and used with old 6s/7s/8s spacers. Buy lower level cassettes. They are a little heavier and the coating/finish is different, but they shift just fine and may last longer.

Bottom line is, you can do this. Takes a little while to get it right, but I run custom cassettes on 6, 8, 9 and 10 speed bikes all the time.

mountaindave 

All good suggestions, Doc. I have routinely bought Sunrace for the reasons you list. Microshift is similar. But even those companies start to use spiders in the 9s & 10s ranges so it can be hard/expensive to get large sprockets as singles.

I have thought about the custom spacer route, just haven’t pulled the trigger. However, I have a massive stash of spacers - they have slightly different dimensions as different manufacturers use slightly different thicknesses of sprockets, so I’m already forced to mix-and-match.

No wonder people like Grant Peterson revive ratchet shifted and spend time designing a rapid rise RD for possible reintroduction.

Classtime 

I hope IRD continues to supply us but it doesn't look good right now.
https://www.interlocracing.com/shop/...earch=cassette
I have enjoyed a 5 speed from them and also a 10 speed cassette. My IRD cassette had no spider.

noobinsf 

This prompted me to check Sunrace's website, and there is an interesting entry, a 7-speed 11-24 cassette that says it is compatible with 10-speed chains. Is this new, and is it fulfilling some specific demand? In any case, I kinda like the look of it.

https://www.sunrace.com/en/products/detail/csd10x-7ap

Edit: I guess I answered my own question by asking Google, "What is a downhill cassette?"

zandoval 

Yep... Read Um and weep. I have had to rebuild my 6 speed Freewheels from new 7 speed freewheels. Looks like the cassettes are going the same way. Oddly as I get older the older stuff gets harder to find. Ha... Oh well... As I have said many times, Its just an engineering problem...

As my parts bin gets smaller and smaller my trash bin gets more valuable...

Fredo76

Makes me feel better about my recent freewheel purchases - maybe I don't have too many after all!

Just went from a 14-28 six speed to a 14-24, because the 18 to 21 jump just felt too big. I like close ratios myself.

bamboobike4

I have an NOS tight one, just pulled (with the 1056 group) from a ‘92 Schwinn.

My first metric, with 4500’ of climbing, was on a 12-21 7-speed, when I thought indexing was magic.

I couldn’t ride that now. I shudder at the thought.

bark_eater 

I think that there will always be a good supply of 7 and 8 speed cassettes. You be able to get any gearing you want as long as it's 11-28t. When the supply of 110 and 130 bcd chainrings dry's up, everyone better hope their happy with one size fits all gearing.

xroadcharlie

When I bought my new Giant Sedona in 2018 I was looking for a bike with a close ratio Cassette/Freewheel. I find it a bit strange that the 6 gears I use most are more closely spaced (14 - 24T) on their entry level comfort bike with the Shimano MegaRange freewheel, The same one used on many other entry level bikes from other manufactures, then most of their road bikes costing 10x as much with 10 and 11 speed cassettes vs 7 speeds.

A little research however shows some Shimano 12 - 28 10 speed cassettes with much better spacing readily available, which I'd have installed if I where looking for a road bike.