Karate Monkey....
A few weeks ago I did a night ride in Patapsco State Park with my friend Dave...we rode single speeds. There were two reasons for the single speed over the geared bike; first of all Dave showed up at my back gate with his rigid single speed. This dictated my choice in rides...being that I am a tad faster than he is on either bike...had I taken my geared bike with front shock...well...I would have been waiting around for him a whole lot (as opposed to waiting around for him a little...which I had to do on the single) Secondly, my rear hub was crazy loose, which I did not realize until I took my bike off the stand after a rapid post Snowshoe Tune Up. With two kids, the demands of my job, and the now Red Tagged deck project I had very little time. The bikes got an occassional clean up with a lube of the chain, but the Geared Monkey got not riding and no love since the 24 Hours of Snowshoe...well it was tunned other than the rear hub. With the HOOHA this weekend I figured it best for me to fix that rear hub....to my disgust the spacing seemed wrong. There were an assortment of spacers in there that just did not fit right. I took it all apart and threw some grease in there, but was unable to get things to lock down. There were two issues....one.....I lacked a 17mm cone wrench, that was easily remedied by flipping the thin spacers so that the notched side for the thin cone wrench was on the outside, thus allowing a standard 17mm wrench to do the trick....but then...and maybe a greasy gearhead will know the answer to this....

HOW DO I LOCK THE CONE SPACER THAT IS THE CASSETTE?
IS THERE A SPECIAL TOOL FOR THIS?

in short...
I was frustrated
went to the garage and grabbed a few old wheels
cursed my donations to Chain Reaction, my generosity may have shot me in the foot
was going to pirate some spacers off some old axles, but the axles are different diameters
and I did not have as many wheels to chose from as I had expected
in any case
I need a new cone wrench, a special took if it exists, and the correct spacers...
And this needs to be done by SUNDAY
well
wanted it done for today so that I could do a test ride
see that this machine was running in 'tip/top' shape

guess not
so that was a no go!