I'm back!
 

Biked to work today after taking 2 years off. Wife's been pregnant the last 2 summers, and wasn't pleased with the idea of me being an hour bike ride away in case of emergency.

The bike worked fine, except for a massive pothole knocking my rear wheel out of alignment, and then this (focus on third smallest cog between rack post and fender stay) :

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/DSC_0364.jpg

Is a single broken tooth on a freewheel cassette a bad thing? I don't know specifically what happened, I don't *think* i was standing on the pedals while shifting at any point. The chain is still within tolerance, and the bike still rides OK... do I need to worry about this missing tooth?

Hi and welcome back.

You're going to increase the chance of the chain jumping, it's not going to happen with every turn of the cog, but it can happen.

You will also increase the wear on your chain.

I would replace both the chain and the cogset, why risk further issues?

Well, since I will have to change out the chain in a thousand miles or so, I was wondering if I could just wait for a while. Sounds like the worst thing will be possible occasional skipping?

I can deal with that for a while. With 4 kids, I can't afford to just drop money on my bike constantly.

I'll ride until the chain wears more, and plan on replacing chain and cogset at the same time.

Thanks for the response!

I'm missing a tooth on my cassette on my roadie. Doesn't stop me from hammering on it.

Welcome back!

Be careful with pedal force while shifting since you might break more teeth if you hammer down while the lateral chain movement happens to coincide with that gap. I wouldn't worry about it too much though if it still rides well, just replace it when you can.

Well, I didn't make 2 days in a row. :(

First, the ride home was 11 miles into a 30+mph headwind and I am sore.

To make it more fun, I suspect someone messed with my bike at work, because the rear derailer was not working properly at all, I think it got bent out of alignment by someone really cranking on the shifter while it was parked. This is very disappointing, and I didn't have time to work on it last night.

And they're predicting heavy rain the next 3 days. So I'll do what I can to ride more, and try again next week.

That sucks. You sure the problem is with the derailleur and not that broken tooth?

Yeah, it was shifting just fine on the ride in, even with the broken tooth. on the ride home, it wouldn't go into the largest cog at all, and would go off the smallest cog and jam if i wasn't extremely careful. I had to turn off the indexing and just do friction to have it engage cogs at all. Seems like someone cranked on the shifter while it was sitting and messed up the cable length in some way? Also, it looks like it's slightly "twisted", where the idlers aren't quite in line with the cogs now.

It's a bit disheartening to think I can't leave my bike inside a professional office building and trust that people know not to play around with things that aren't theirs.
With the horrifying headwind, I *really* wanted that largest cog, too.

in the past I have bitten the bullet, brought my bike to a reputable shop and had them do a ride-ready tuneup. fix wutz broke and adjust/lube the rest. it was money well spent and I was happy.

congrats on the baby!

That sounds like a bent DR hanger. It's possible that it got knocked over or something banged into it - it could be an accident not deliberate messing with.