Cassette fell off while whacking the wheel on a rock — is this normal?

pasta_paul

While replacing an inner tube, I whacked my rear wheel's tire on a rock to make sure the tube inside was straight and had no kinks. While doing so, my cassette fell off, together with a few inner parts. I could maybe prevent that if I held the wheel the other way around. Is this normal? I heard that you need a pretty specialized tool to get the cassette off, so maybe not. On the other hand, I was able to reassemble everything and continue riding...

Originally asked by anatolyg on Stack Exchange (bicycles) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

I think that perhaps what has happened is you have a more modern wheel having a thru axle hub. Some manufacturers design the rear hub to accept the 4 major freehub body types as well as accepting different end caps so the wheel can be used with a thru axle or in a bike with conventional dropouts and a QR skewer. To make cleaning and swapping the freehub or converting axle standards as user friendly as possible, the rear hub of a such a system has end caps and freehub bodies that can be removed by hand. This works because what holds everything together is the securing of the thru axle into the frame (or in the case of a QR skewer, it's mating to the acorn nut on the side opposite it's...

Full answer by Jeff: https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/a/87373 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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