SS freewheel removal, and a question

[drevil]

Once you put on the White Industry freewheel, you’ll never need to take it off

As an alternative, I wonder if you could have taken off the nuts on the other side, then push the axle out, exiting the freewheel side.

To answer your question, I’m thinking that they put the “cone” closest to the bearing because it has threads and braces against it. If you put the cone against the locknut, it’d be further out and possibly get looser more quickly?

if it was me, I’d see if my alternative worked. If so, I’d put the cone back against the bearing.

[EasyRider]

@drevil 201987 wrote:

Once you put on the White Industry freewheel, you’ll never need to take it off

As an alternative, I wonder if you could have taken off the nuts on the other side, then push the axle out, exiting the freewheel side.

To answer your question, I’m thinking that they put the “cone” closest to the bearing because it has threads and braces against it. If you put the cone against the locknut, it’d be further out and possibly get looser more quickly?

if it was me, I’d see if my alternative worked. If so, I’d put the cone back against the bearing.

Thanks. If I’m being honest, taking off the Shimano freewheel was a want, not a need

I did try taking the nuts off the fixed gear side but the axle didn’t budge when I gave it a pretty good “tap” with a mallet. After 3 taps I got the “you don’t know what you are doing” feeling so I figured I’d wreck the freewheel instead of the hub. Another thing I tried was to squeeze a cheapo combo wrench between the locknut and track nut on the opposite side, to simulate a dropout. I figured maybe I could get it tight enough, I could hold the wrench and axle still while undoing the locknut on the other side. That didn’t work because when I put a wrench on the locknut it was pretty easy to overcome the friction holding the combo wrench in place.

What you say makes sense about the cone vs washer. I’ll think I’ll give the reordering a try though. With spacers the hub is 130mm, and my old Trek frame has 126mm dropouts, so maybe it’s less likely to loosen, being a bit squeezed already.

[dkel]

You could go the other way with the spacers: use narrower spacers and aim for 123 mm (or so), so you are gaining some advantage for your freewheel tool, and you can squeeze the frame that couple of mm to make up the difference. I tried a 120 hub in a 125 spaced frame, and found it put the rear wheel slightly out of square with that much frame deflection; in that case I went ahead and opted to have the frame respaced to 120 by the LBS since it’s easy and inexpensive to do that to a steel frame. If your frame is steel, that is another option, then you can just chuck the spacers altogether.

[EasyRider]

@dkel 201994 wrote:

You could go the other way with the spacers: use narrower spacers and aim for 123 mm (or so), so you are gaining some advantage for your freewheel tool, and you can squeeze the frame that couple of mm to make up the difference. I tried a 120 hub in a 125 spaced frame, and found it put the rear wheel slightly out of square with that much frame deflection; in that case I went ahead and opted to have the frame respaced to 120 by the LBS since it’s easy and inexpensive to do that to a steel frame. If your frame is steel, that is another option, then you can just chuck the spacers altogether.

Clever idea, thanks. The tool could almost engage, a couple millimeters more is all that would be needed to get it seated.

[drevil]

I too have had to destructively remove cheap freewheels before. I just ran into this, but it would’ve been nice if I had a tool like this Unior back then

[EasyRider]

@drevil 201998 wrote:

I too have had to destructively remove cheap freewheels before. I just ran into this, but it would’ve been nice if I had a tool like this Unior back then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu-5aPLZ9pY

Neat tool!

[Author]

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