Shimano freewheel or cassette?

[Kingo]

I am/was in the middle of changing a snapped rear axle, and came to the conclusion I needed to remove the cassette to tighten the components of the new axle enough.

Anyhow on removing the cassette/freewheel ball bearings went everywhere and it seemed to be much more complicated than first thought.

Below are a couple of pics of how everything now is.

What do I need to get this thing going again?

Excuse if I have mixed terminology etc, bikes are not my strongpoint although I am curious to learn.

[nfmisso]

You have a freewheel - disassembled there. And you need to get the rest of it off the hub - which is tricky. The threads use see are machined into the hub - most likely aluminum, and thus somewhat fragile. The black part below the copper/brass colored part is also part of the hub. The brass colored part is the remains of the freewheel.

I doubt that the freewheel can be re-assembled; I would not even try.

On another matter, the bolts on the axle do not appear to be correct. There should be a bearing cone which is usually shiny black, then a spacer and finally a lock nut.

Removing the freewheel/freehub is not required to tighten up the rear axle bearings. The drive side (DS) cone, space and jam nut should be positioned so that enough of the axle will stick through the drop out of the frame to safely secure the nut that holds the wheel to the bike. The jam nut and cone are torqued against each other. (Some thread locker on these two doesn't hurt, because once correctly positioned, they should never move - until the cone wears out, which will probably happen at the same time as the cup that is pressed into the hub wearing out - at which point, you are buying a new hub anyhow.) This makes the DS of the axle into a rigid unmoving assembly. Clean the cups, and balls (or better yet replaced the balls) and cones, apply grease to the DS cup, place the balls in the grease, slide the axle assembly in. Grease the NDS cup, place balls, thread on the NDS cone, tighten so that the wheel spins nicely with no wobble, slide on the space and jam/lock nut, torque the jam nut against the space while holding the cone with a cone wrench to prevent rotation. Verify spinning is free and no wobble; loose and re-tighten as required.

[elmore leonard]

My 2 cents! One option, if your not to bike savvy, like I am sometimes, or if replacing a broken wheel with a good wheel is cheaper then fixing the old one, is to look on Craigs List for a replacement.

[cny-man]

A replacement may be a good idea, but it's sometimes a challenged for an inexperienced person to judge a wheel. It's almost impossible to judge the amount of wear on a freewheel, so unless you are up to learning how to reassemble it you should just buy a new one.

Judging from your previous posts you are the "dive right in" type, but as you see that can get you into additional trouble and expense. I would advise you for this project and in the future to seek out a bike co-op or knowledgeable friend to assist in your next project. Failing that, first Google "bike parts diagram," and after familiarizing yourself with terminology search for what you want to do before going at parts of the bike. sheldonbrown.com and parktool.com/blog are good sources of info. As Nigel noted the freewheel (or cassette) generally does not have to be touched to adjust a hub. Although it is best to remove it when overhauling you disassembled it instead.