removing stubborn five speed (screw on )

[JohnW]

Is there anybody here who, if they were starting from scratch, would go for freewheels?

'Starting from scratch' is a big ask tc - the advantage of screw-on freewheels is that we get a new freewheel for every time we wear our sprockets out, but with cassettes we have to rely on long life for the freewheel mechanism, and it doesn't always work that way. Cassettes are no cheaper than screw-on freewheels - more expensive in fact.

In the life of a modern rim, I find that I get two block/chain ensembles for the life of a rim - assuming riding in decent conditions, no longer commuting all year round. Will a freehub freewheel mechanism last the mileage of two sets (i.e. four) chain/cassett ensembles?

I started from scratch with a new frame about 12 years ago, and I had it built at 130mm, for freehub wheels. In choice of hub, I had to make a conscious and thought out decision - which freehub was compatible with most cassettes? - and I have a Shimano Ultegra. I think that freehub loses on cost and compatibility, and gains on ease of changing cassette (if you can find what you want, compatible with your hub) and location of bearings, which being at the spindle end on both ends doesn't tend to deflect the spindle. I would probably do the same again until I come across a problem.

Another problem now is that availability of screw-on blocks in decent quality is a bit restricted. I now have an IRD block from Spa (I discovered them on this Forum); whilst it wasn't cheap it's outlasting the current Shimano 6-speed blocks on my other bikes - and still counting.

edited to correct a grammatical error

[thirdcrank]

JohnW

Where do broken spindles fit on your equation?

[Brucey]

....As to low hears - the low gears allow easier pedalling over a given distance - achieving lower gears by us of granny (chain)rings puts less stress on the rear hub than achieving them by use of big sprockets....

that is not quite the case.

The tightening torque on the freewheel increases as the gear ratio decreases, regardless of how exactly it is achieved.

However there is a bending load on the axle that arises from the reaction to the chain tension. The chain tension is a function of chainring size only; smaller chainrings develop higher chain tensions. Thus a 22T chainring develops double the chain tension vs a 44T chainring, and the bending loads in the axle are also doubled, at any given chainline.

cheers

[jimlews]

[quote="hamster"]Firstly, work done is force x distance - very low gears give the huge forces at the hub as Brucey says. Pressing down on a 22T chainring puts 2x the forces of a 44T. Beware.

I don't quite understand why you are so against Shimano hubs

Hi Hamster,
I have nothing at all against freehubs; several of my bikes are so equipped.7sp, 8sp & 9sp. I also have some older bikes; I like to keep things reasonably age related. I wouldn't put carbon fibre forks on my 1949 Stokes of London for instance (or on anything else for that matter, well, possibly the local landfill). And anyway, I'm having fun!

Brucey,
yes, I like the idea of that outrigger bearing. I May attempt that.

Jim Lewis

[JohnW]

JohnW

Where do broken spindles fit on your equation?

I've had broken spindles in earlier days of using 5-speed blocks when I knew no better than, and could afford no better than, Maillard Normandy and similar hubs. Most of my riding, of quite good distances - up to 150 mile days - was done alone and only after beginning to ride with our CTC section, in the seventies, did I learn that there was another way - buy better quality hubs. I changed to Campag hubs and never looked back. It cost a lot of money, but worth it in the long run.

We used to joke that Normandy hub spindles were made from plasticene - I got to know the symptoms of a broken rear spindle. I found the Normandy and other, similar quality hubs to be very poor at that time in other ways (if they're still made then they're probably better now). I found that the change to Campag cured the broken spindle problem, but I could still bend them - annoyingly. By this time I was loading panniers and riding with a group, it was all faster. The problem was obviously that the block-side bearings were near the centre of the spindle - the worst place to put a load. I just got to live with bent spindles, and I checked them and replaced them when necessary.

I've found that DuraAce hubs were also of reliable quality. I've found that the spindles on the cheaper, more recent Campag hubs to be more prone to bending. I buy from my LBS and Spa some Campag replacement spindles made in America and I've found that they don't even bend using 6-speed blocks in a 123mm and a 126mm rear-end frame. They're expensive but worth it. I don't now know whether the genuine Campag spindles are still available for the Record screw-on hubs..............the hubs aren't available anymore.

Another points on the subject. For a short while I used Sun-Tour Ultra-6 and Ultra-7 blocks; these gave big sprockets up to 32 teeth, and some silly Shimano 5-speed blocks went up to 32T - one of us even had a 34T Shimano block!. I tried these for the sake of it.........just a mannerism, and quite unnecessary really. However, whilst such big sprockets got the blocks appallingly tight on the hubs, they were no worse for breaking spindles - they didn't break Campag spindles. For a while during this period I was using a 'Suzue' and a 'Sun-Race' hub, and they didn't break spindles. I was riding 42-52 chainsets - in fact nothing bigger than a 28T sprocket was necessary and I soon reverted - but the only effect ON ME of those extreme low gears was tightening of the blocks on the hub - not damage to the spindle or bearing cups.

Whilst on bearing cups, during my Maillard Normandy hub days, I twice suffered collapsed bearing cups on the block side.

I don't want to contradict Brucey, or the assembly of physics PhDs on the Forum, but ultra low gears didn't make damage to hubs/bearings/spindles any worse FOR ME. We weren't slouches in our section - our 'hard riders' group were quite hard riders, for touring lads, and our bikes were not coddled.

[thirdcrank]

My dear old Dad started me off with Campag Gran Sport hubs in 1959. Five speed then, of course, with fixed on the other side. I don't remember any problems, other than removing the freewheel blocks.

I got my first Record hubs in 1980 when, with a huge pay rise, I was able to buy my first new - not second-hand frame - from Bob Jackson's in the Harehills days. I made the mistake of sticking with 5 speed and soon graduated to six, initially with compact blocks. By then, as a family man, no touring so just day rides and no need for particularly low gears. I broke several axles, which is why I raised the query. The next big leap forward was after retiring in 1997 when I was able to have another new frame, this time from Woodrup's. I moved to Ultegra STI - 9 speed - and what a revelation.

In terms of quality, that classic Campag stuff was supreme, and Ultegra rather rough in comparison, but the innovations introduced by Suntour (which I missed out on) and Shimano really changed things.

[Brucey]

Maillard (who made 'Normandy' branded hubs) were absorbed into SRAM and carried on making hubs for some time. Dunno if they still do, but SRAM (maillard built) cassette hubs are OK. However Maillard axles (3/8" solid or 10mm hollow) on freewheel hubs broke often.

In the final years of Maillard branding, they built stronger hubs for MTB use, and issued stronger solid axles for use in 'Atom' tandem hub brakes, too. These were threaded 11mm (I think ) and to use them in older hubs one needed to replace the 1/4" balls with 7/32" ones. This made the hubs much more reliable, but I don't know of any source for such axles now.

Campag QR axles used to be silver coloured (these bent and/or broke) and were later black coloured. The black axles bent less often, but still broke. One of my chums used to break several every year (with no load, and without low gears being used). I used to break them too, but not as often; I would get 18 months or a couple of years out of one.

Shimano axles for freewheel hubs were stronger than campag ones; I broke surprisingly few even when touring with such hubs. I would expect some aftermarket CrMo axles to be at least as good as that. BTW I am not sure that axles inside cassette hubs are made as strongly (they probably don't need to be) so this plus the odd threading lengths means that I would think twice before using an axle meant for a cassette hub in a freewheel hub.

cheers

[mig]

so you're pootling along or slogging uphill and the rear axle breaks.

what happens? big cracking noise and grind to a halt? or something more ?

i've never done it

[JohnW]

so you're pootling along or slogging uphill and the rear axle breaks.

what happens? big cracking noise and grind to a halt? or something more ?

i've never done it

What I felt was the rear wheel rubbing on the inside of the chainstay. I don't remember anything spectacular. The solid spindles were worse than the hollow (QR) spindles, because on QR hubs the skewer held everything together and even keep the bearings adjusted! Sometimes I found a broken spindle when removing the wheel for another purpose and didn't know how long it had been broken.

Campag spindles certainly did bend, and I'd replace them if they were looking badly bent - if the spindle is bent, and I'd taken the wheel out for some reason (usually punctures in pre-Kevlar days) it was so easy to put the hub back in the frame with the spindle 'the other way up'. The spindle would then bend back - sometimes straighten up - and then bend the other way. A couple of cycles of that, and the spindle would be work hardening, and then understandably break.

What a man Brucey must be, to be so naturally destructive of Campag spindles!

I think that the freehub has tackled that problem by design.

[Brucey]

as John says, a solid axle breaking stops you in your tracks, a QR one breaking is usually but not always noticeable.

If you ride around with a broken QR axle, the frame can in turn break, usually in the chainstay, in or near the dropout.

cheers

[thirdcrank]

... What I felt was the rear wheel rubbing on the inside of the chainstay.

Me too.

I think that the freehub has tackled that problem by design.

And that's preety much the whole point. A screw on freewheel is as good a way of doing it as any when it's only a single sprocket. It was probably inevitable that the same general idea persisted as the number of sprockets increased. If it had all started with multiple sprockets, something along the lines of the freehub would probably have been used from the beginning. The skill of the Japanese manufacturers was in thinking it through from basics, rather than just following the same path.

[Brucey]

.... The skill of the Japanese manufacturers was in thinking it through from basics, rather than just following the same path.

arguably their skill was to take a good idea, and make it work better and then make and sell it at a reasonable cost. The cassette hub was not a new idea (eg Bayliss-Wiley unit hub, circa 1938) and even SA hubs supported multiple sprockets on a splined driver (sound familiar?) but the shimano one was better, and was sold at a reasonable cost/fitted OEM on lots of bikes, thus making its adoption/ubiquity more likely.

cheers

[Roger_H]

I always found the best way of taking off a block was to hold the remover firmly in place with the QR and then put the flats on the remover into a vice and try turning the wheel from the rim.

I never had a particular problem with Regina, but holding the remover firmly in place was key to not rounding off the dogs etc. I was never able to just hold a remover in pace by hand without it rising and making a mess.

Just need to remember to relieve the tension on the QR spindle bit by bit as it the block starts to move.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
After breaking an old but quality vice, its best to hold a wrench in the vice, as Brucey has pointed out in the past.
Vice's are so versatile that we forget not to abuse them, and I still will for sure, unless you gave a six inch record.

I put a hollow shimano axel in a freewheel hub and it snapped within a thousand miles maybe 500, but of course its still a freewheel with the same old design fault.

Cant look back after my first freehub in early 80's.
They truly are very robust, despite me abusing them rotten, not unheard of to break an axel or the freehub its self (normally lack of care the later), but I use them on my trainers and they always weigh 50Ibs and I have covered 95 % of Dartmoor off road with camping gear weighing in at 70Ibs without a thought of failure at all on a cheap alivio 7S hub, when alivio was bottom of the rung.