I had ordered an 8-speed cassette with a larger cog online, but it seems to be lost in the mail. One of the bike shops in Carbondale had a similar 9-speed cassette available, so I picked that up when they opened. Then I headed over to my aunt & uncle’s house where other parts had been delivered to prepare my bike for mountains.
I first installed the new cassette using my Stein Tool Mini Cassette Lockring Driver (found here), which allows removal and installation of cassettes without a wrench or chain whip.
I thought I would only be able to reach 7 of the cogs, but the slightly closer spacing on the 9-speed made it possible to use 8 cogs. I am using 13-42 and can switch to using 11-34 if I want to in flat areas.
I next installed a front rack from Pass & Stow Racks (found here). This did not go so smoothly. The dropouts on my fork are threaded to M6 instead of the much more common M5 and the bracket for connecting to the caliper brake was not actually compatible with my old school dia comp brakes. The larger dropout holes were not a big deal, I just used them as through holes, but it did mean that throughout the process of figuring out the bracket I had to do a lot more screwing and unscrewing than otherwise would have been needed. The bracket took a lot of thinking and bending to make work.
Ultimately I attached it to the back of the fork, which causes a limitation on turn radius, but it should not interfere with normal riding.
