I recently had great success fashioning a tool to remove an obscure (?) cassette.
It's a long story why I got to do this so I'll spare the details of that end of things, but
basically I had to remove a cassette to replace a broken spoke on a friend's bike. The cassette is a
Shimano one I've never encountered before. The Shimano tool I have has worked in every other
situation but this one had a smaller diameter internal spline. I didn't want to buy a tool for the
sake of a one-off and I never, ever go near the LBS so my options were rather limited.
On the cassette there are twelve splines so I reasoned that a hex head bolt just the right size was
a possibility. My calipers measured a nominal 17mm and yep, a bolt I just happened to have stored
away was a reasonable fit. Having no nuts to fit the bolt was a bit of a let down so I gathered up
my determination and headed for the local automotive supplier at lunch time the following day.
I spotted an alternative candidate on a display stand of packaged nuts and bolts. The sales guy even
opened the package and calipered the bolt for me and it was rather exciting to come up with a bolt
head measuring 17.8mm. I figured I could always file the sucker down if it didn't fit in the
cassette. To cut to the chase, the bolt fitted in with some encouraging nudges from a hammer -
excellent. The downside was that I couldn't get the locknuts tight enough on the bolt to budge the
cassette. Move to plan 'e': I dropped in to an automotive exhaust fitting shop at lunchtime the
following day and had the very obliging dude there weld one of the nuts to the bolt. He didn't even
want any money but I left $4 in change on his bench.
When I got home after work I hacksawed of the superfluous thread sticking out of the nut, hammer the
bolt head into the cassette, loaded the socket onto the welded nut, prayed and did a mental check of
where I could possibly pick up a 27" wheel if this cassette wouldn't come off, and whacked the hell
out of the socket bar. Voila! It came off as sweet as anything.
I replaced the spokes, trued the wheel, etc, etc, and happily delivered the bike tonight.
It just goes to show that with a bit of thought, a lot of luck and some sense, anything is possible.
I should add too that the bolt that saved the day was high tensile and I doubt anything less would
have survived. All up it cost me around $10 (the nut and bolt package cost $5) and I have an extra
tool in my kit. Oh, and I've found that if you honour the people who helped it definitely pays off
in the future.
Hope this helps, cheerz,
Lynzz