Originally Posted by
oldbobcat
every 8-, 9-, and 10-speed cassette I've seen bolts, rivets, or swages the three largest cogs together. There's probably a reason for this.
These can be easily disassembled or defeated with a dremel tool (rivets.) The purpose is to make the cassette stiffer, easier to install, and (to a certain extent) not tear up the freehub body. I have never had a problem running loose cog cassettes on steel Shimano Freehub bodies. Cheap aluminum knockoffs, probably best to leave those rivets intact.
Originally Posted by
zukahn1
Basically on a derailleur your limited to a 4 cog jump on road DR's and maybe 6 on long cage MB anyting more is going to have problems.
Have to disagree here. I'm currently running a 21-28 jump on my road bike (7 teeth) with a Shimano 600 tri-color short cage RD. It indexes just fine. Maybe I will put a 30 back on there and see if it will do a 9 tooth jump. (I already know it will handle the 30T.)