Knock, knock

During Sunday's race, my bike developed a concerning knocking noise that was coming from the rear end. Initially I assumed it had something to do with the new derailleur I had installed Friday night (which shifted perfectly by the way) but after the race, when I inspected it, there didn't seem to be anything wrong. Tuesday, when I finally got around to cleaning the bike, I found out what the problem was. The plastic carrier for the lowest gears (4 I think) had somehow managed to notch itself a bit over the pawls (I'm not sure if that is what they're really called) on the freehub body which allowed them a little bit of play to move back and forth thus creating the sound. To fix it, I had to pull the cassette off which turned out to be quite a freakin ordeal. The aluminum hub body so completely chewed up by the top 4-5 gears that it took a rubber mallet and a wrench through the other side of the wheel to get them to come off. F! So not only did I somehow ruin a perfectly good cassette (which I've decided to save along with the chain for this fall) but I munged the hub body as well. I know that alloy hub bodies tend to mark up a bit because they're softer than steel but damn, this shouldn't happen. Thankfully, before the season started I bought another cassette and a few chains so I had a new one to slap on and everything is good to go now.

This bad boy went on and an older style 980 came off. After checking the SRAM website, apparently they no longer make them with the plastic spider. Good move.