Understanding nine-speed spacing on cassettes

Posted: 2000-07-20

Symptoms

What does “nine-speed spacing” mean? It seems that the shifters do not match the cog set, because you’re using nine-speed shifters with only eight cogs. Is this a mistake?

Causes

This arrangement is intentional.

Bike Fridays require some special adjustments during production. Bike Friday has learned many tricks, and this is one that works very well.

The SRAM Spectro 3×7 three-speed hub is built to accomadate a seven-speed cassette. Many of our customers want eight-speed cassettes, and the industry is moving away from seven-speed cogs, making them less available.

Solutions

The solution to this problem is to take a nine-speed cassette, and remove one cog. This makes it an eight-speed cassette, with nine-speed spacing. It also makes it the same overall width as a seven-speed cassette, so it fits on the SRAM Spectro 3×7 hub.

The bottom line is that it is not a mistake, and it works well.