[Jm.]

Just an FYI, I worked on a bike a few days ago that was supplied with a bunch of new parts to be installed. One was a performance 9-spd cassette. When everything was on the bike, it would shift to bigger cogs fairly well, but it wouldn't shift down AT ALL, it would also hang up on the 7th gear both ways. His shifter was very junky (housing missing, parts exposed) so we thought it might be the detents wearing out, nope. Replaced the cable and housing, still had the same problem. Hanger alignment was good.

Replaced the cassette with a PG970 on a whim, and it completely solved the problem. The performance cassette WOULD NOT SHIFT and was an entire waste of money for this guy. I'd be pissed if I was him, and demand my money back.

The cassette "looked" good enough, but I'd advise anyone that is looking for an inexepensive cassette to look somewhere else, this thing was utter crap in terms of performance. I don't think sram cassettes last as long as shimano, but relative to this thing I'd give sram a 8 out of 10, shimano a 10 out of 10, and performance of course would get a zero because it just didn't even work...

 

[glenk]

yeah, same experience

These are terrible. The stamping for the shift ramps are very poor, along with that the pickup angles for the teeth are not well formed. These functions both work together to make the Shimano Hyperglide system.

I had one that didn't shift up from 7 to 6. If I set the derailleur to lean towards the upshift, I'd have problems with the down shifts. I even went as far as grinding down the shift ramps and teeth to improve performance. Even with that, it would occassionally give me problems. I too wondered if my shifters were an issue but a quick change of the cassette with my 9spd road 12-25 eliminated that as a problem.

Stick with Shimano and Sram.

glenk

 

[tlg]

Just an FYI, I worked on a bike a few days ago that was supplied with a bunch of new parts to be installed. One was a performance 9-spd cassette....

I've been using a performance 8sp cassette for a while now. It's worked great and has held up good. I wonder what the difference is between it and the 9sp.

Did you figure out what was wrong with it? Spacing problem? Bent cog?

 

[glenk]

yeah, same experience again

The first Performance cassette I had was an 8 spd in 12/28. When I first got it, the "stamping" for the smallest cog had metal flash that didn't allow it to sit flush into the 7th cog. Once I got that cleaned up with a file, it worked fine for a thousand miles until I replaced it for a 11/32. That's why I gave the Performance 9spd a try.

I'm wondering if Performance just had a bad lot of cassettes. I got the 9spd in Sept., gave up on it after about four months of missed shifts. Too lazy to try to get a refund and of course I did use my Dremel on it to try to make it better.

glenk

 

[Jm.]

I've been using a performance 8sp cassette for a while now. It's worked great and has held up good. I wonder what the difference is between it and the 9sp.

Did you figure out what was wrong with it? Spacing problem? Bent cog?

It looked perfect, it was brand new in the box when we put it on, but the "computer designed" ramps and shapes were just bad, no other way to describe it. The kinds of spacing errors that might throw off the shifting are sometimes hard to see by the naked eye, if you get in there with some micrometers/calipers you can usually figure them out, but I didn't do that this time, there was no big need to, it was just "bad".

Occasionally I get a freewheel that has a bad-spacing between one of the gears, this requires the entire thing to be replaced, but the rest of it usually works fairly good. The performance cassette was far worse.

 

[glenk]

Calipers? I did that too.

Hey JM.
I think we're alike. I would have bet the 6-7 index gap on the Performance cassette was off, or the total cassette stack distance was too wide, making derailleur adjustment for the whole range of shifts impossible. So I had my calipers out to measure the gaps on the lower three gears, and actually short sided the 6-7 gap by milling the cog spacer down a few mils. That and cleaning up the shift ramps helped but shifting was never ever "great". I had this cassette on and off my bike at least ten times, trying different experiments.

This was a 9spd cassette alright, but Performance doesn't tell you that you have to have old style friction shifters to use it.

glenk

 

[Hecubus]

Thats pretty lame. Especially when you consider for almost the same price you can buy a middle of the line Shimano or Sram cassette that will shift almost as good as the top of the line models. At least with these cassettes in the market people will understand the importance of quality ramp and cassette design.