andrew_s wrote:...........(eg 46/36/24, Spa Cycles, cheaper options available). Spa also have a 4-arm chainset that goes down to 22T..................
Yes, without further information I think that's the way I'd go. The problem that I've found with freewheels with a bigger big sprocket that 28T is that the leverage whilst pedalling gets the block mighty tight onto the hub.
With bar-end gear levers, I believe that the front changer lever is friction. I have friction down-tube levers and I find that everything is compatible with everything else in terms of the gear train - but with STI/Ergo levers it's a different matter.
I think that you may find 24T gets you low enough, but if not, personally I'd just get a 22-32-42 from Spa.
I think that you may find 24T gets you low enough, but if not, personally I'd just get a 22-32-42 from Spa.
Thanks for your input, I agree. I've needed lower gears while touring in France 9 years ago so I kind of have an idea of what I'm after. Something that will do 100 miles a day under normal conditions AND get me up into the Alps without very, very sore thighs!
for some years I was fussy enough about my gearing that I liked my 'normal ratios' in average terrain but I still wanted a lower gear or two when tackling certain big climbs in the alps. If you are prepared to remove the sprockets from the cassette (or freewheel in your case) you can revise your gearing to suit the days ride ahead of you. For this purpose I would sometimes carry a 32T sprocket in my bag and fit it in place of one of the others where necessary.
TBH it is a bit of a faff to do this but it may (for example) be possible to obtain a 30T sprocket and fit that in place of your usual 28T one, rear mech etc permitting. Most vintage sun tour freewheels use basically the same (four dog) fitting for the two (or three) lowest sprockets. However IIRC a little grinding is required in some cases e.g. if you wish to fit a 'perfect' sprocket (with rounded dogs) to a new winner body which has shallower grooves in it.
TBH it is a bit of a faff to do this but it may (for example) be possible to obtain a 30T sprocket and fit that in place of your usual 28T one, rear mech etc permitting. Most vintage sun tour freewheels use basically the same (four dog) fitting for the two (or three) lowest sprockets. However IIRC a little grinding is required in some cases e.g. if you wish to fit a 'perfect' sprocket (with rounded dogs) to a new winner body which has shallower grooves in it.
I've thought about this option too, but I don't have a natural aptitude for bike mechanics! I do think that slowing down and building up strength is half of the solution. I burnt myself out on my last tour riding from Calais to the Nice in 7 days and then trying to go straight up into the Alps. I was headstrong and should have had more respect for the mountains!
TBH it is a bit of a faff to do this but it may (for example) be possible to obtain a 30T sprocket and fit that in place of your usual 28T one, rear mech etc permitting. Most vintage sun tour freewheels use basically the same (four dog) fitting for the two (or three) lowest sprockets. However IIRC a little grinding is required in some cases e.g. if you wish to fit a 'perfect' sprocket (with rounded dogs) to a new winner body which has shallower grooves in it.
I've thought about this option too, but I don't have a natural aptitude for bike mechanics! I do think that slowing down and building up strength is half of the solution. I burnt myself out on my last tour riding from Calais to the Nice in 7 days and then trying to go straight up into the Alps. I was headstrong and should have had more respect for the mountains!
Actually, having used the Sun-Tour Ultra freewheel blocks in years gone by, and replaced sprockets when worn, I found it no big thing to do it, providing I had the right tools, and providing I'd tried it once on an old block that I could throw away. However, how many of us carry chain whips when on tour? The bigger sprocket then takes us back to my comment about the block getting screwed mighty tight onto the hub.
I do endorse my previous, to the effect that I'd go for a smaller little ring on the chainset. I've done this a few times as the years went by, and I know how the need for lower gears proceeds upon us as the years go by. I have 3 bikes on the go at the moment, one (bad weather and shopping) has 30-40-50 chairings on a Shimano 6-speed 14-28 block, and the other (everything bike) has 26-36-46 chainrings on an IRD 6-speed 13-28 block (the other, fairweather only, has has 28-39-46 chainrings on an 8-speed 12-30 freehub, but that's a different animal altogether within the terms of the question).
I very rarely if ever use the 50T chainring nowadays, so I find a 42T big ring OK for top gear - not for trying to beat the 'bus home or wanting to be a wannabee racer, but for day to day (or week to week) touring, especially heavily laden. I'm 73, and I find the lowest gears on my everything and fairweather bikes), at 25" get me up anything in the Yorkshire Dales - so a 24chainring/28sprocket at 23" would be OK for most things...................but 22/28 at 21" may give extra peace of mind.
44-24 chainset on IRD 13-28 block would give 91" top and 23" bottom.
FWIW larger sprockets do tighten the freewheel onto the hub, but they obviously don't tighten the threaded smaller sprockets onto the freewheel body. These are the ones you need to unscrew if you want to change the splined sprockets on the freewheel body.
BTW there is a clever way of wrapping the chain round two sprockets on the freewheel at once which allows the threaded ones to be unscrewed 'in the field' as it were.
I found it so much more difficult to remove my touring bike's freewheel from the hub when I needed to that I basically gave up on it; my plan in the event of spoke breakage was to remove the sprockets from the freewheel body which then allowed access to the RH flange (on a large flange hub).
If you are doing a lot of laden miles with low gears using a screw-on freewheel, it isn't at all a bad idea to carry a spare rear axle. In most hubs they are at risk of fatigue failure. I have broken several.
Brucey wrote:FWIW larger sprockets do tighten the freewheel onto the hub, but they obviously don't tighten the threaded smaller sprockets onto the freewheel body. These are the ones you need to unscrew if you want to change the splined sprockets on the freewheel body................
Yeah - but eventually you have to take the block off. Also, the chain may be too worn for the new sprocket, and the other original sprockets may be too worn for the new chain. A new chainset will probably mean a new chain.
Your comment about the spare spindle is oh so very true - and I've even known the block-side bearing cup of a hub to collapse; mind you, that was in the days when all I and my companions could thoil was Maillard Normandy hubs.................I soon learned to buy Campag Record hubs, most of which I still have/use. You can't get that quality any more though.
JohnW wrote:...Yeah - but eventually you have to take the block off....
I managed to avoid doing this for a very long time; several decades in fact. The only repair operations I couldn't do were to replace the innermost part of the freewheel body, and to replace the RH bearing insert in the hub. Most folk wouldn't bother with the latter anyway.
Of several similar (adjustable, rebuildable, new winner) freewheel bodies I had on various bikes only one ever became damaged (through neglect and corrosion) in a such a way that you might want to replace the innermost part of the body. I stripped it and inspected it and it had raceways that were pitted because of corrosion. I threw it back together, and it actually carried on working OK but was just a bit rumbly when freewheeling. I carried on using it and eventually it improved of its own accord. If the same thing had ever happened on my touring bike, I would suppose that I'd have been able to carry on in a similar way.
It might seem a mad way of carrying on but to put it into context those freewheel bodies used a two-dog remover that I broke several examples of, and using one didn't make for a good roadside repair anyway; in the workshop I needed to use an enormous amount of force to remove freewheels on bikes that I had ridden; I almost invariably had very great difficulty in removing them. In fact I also gave up trying out other people's bikes with enthusiasm because most times when I did this the freewheel tightened appreciably and then they would have similar troubles getting it off afterwards.
How folk carried on with the older, even weaker two dog removers that were commonplace at one time, I have no idea. The few freewheels that I have owned of this type have had to be removed using destructive techniques and scrapped following remover failure. I'm not even sure I managed to successfully remove one from a wheel that I'd ridden, not even on a road bike with just a 24T largest sprocket.
Re the possibility of a worn chain; you are right of course, but IME a slightly worn chain on a new chainring runs OK even if it wears the chainring faster than normal. It is also unlikely that a new/unused large sprocket will run badly even if it is used with a fairly worn chain.
Brucey wrote:..................................... How folk carried on with the older, even weaker two dog removers that were commonplace at one time, I have no idea......................
Oh I can tell you that - first we stripped the dogs off the remover and then chewed into the ring on the freewheel.................then we got a hardened nail-punch, held the hub as best we could in a vice, and then whacked the nail-punch with a big hammer holding it against what was left of the ring on the freewheel. Good quality removers fared better on good quality freewheels, but for years I'd reverted to removing and then re-fitting the freewheel every couple of weeks. Even the SunTour New Winner removers had their bad moments. My local bike shop in those days stripped the freewheel down and applied magic forces. But then the Shimano splined system appeared and what a difference it made. Could be that there were things that I didn't know about, but when the splined blocks/removers came on stream, I didn't need to know about the things I'd not known about.
I think that you may find 24T gets you low enough, but if not, personally I'd just get a 22-32-42 from Spa.
I took the bike up a few hills yesterday for a reappraisal. It's a great bike for wet, gritty lanes, but getting it up the hills is a drag. I'm going right down to 22t now. I've picked up a chainset which I'll try to fit this weekend ( 42 32 22 , 170mm crank arms ).
Putting the larger chainset on a lighter bike is always an option, and over time maybe more of the Suntour parts can be moved over to my Galaxy which is intended for lighter use. Thanks for the input so far, hopefully if I can swap these parts successfully, I'll feel less daunted by mechanics in general. For now I think I'll leave the Dremels in your capable hands! Cheers
Brucey wrote:..................................... How folk carried on with the older, even weaker two dog removers that were commonplace at one time, I have no idea......................
Oh I can tell you that - first we stripped the dogs off the remover and then chewed into the ring on the freewheel.................then we got a hardened nail-punch, held the hub as best we could in a vice, and then whacked the nail-punch with a big hammer holding it against what was left of the ring on the freewheel. Good quality removers fared better on good quality freewheels, but for years I'd reverted to removing and then re-fitting the freewheel every couple of weeks. Even the SunTour New Winner removers had their bad moments. My local bike shop in those days stripped the freewheel down and applied magic forces. But then the Shimano splined system appeared and what a difference it made. Could be that there were things that I didn't know about, but when the splined blocks/removers came on stream, I didn't need to know about the things I'd not known about.
I only had a few of the weaker two-dog freewheels but they were always a problem; much bodging along the lines you describe. I have helped out lots of other people with this exact problem too. The thing I don't understand is why folk put up with it for so long; I wonder how many people were put off cycling altogether by this? BITD I wasn't brave enough to do it, but these days I will happily grind a couple of flats on the innermost part of a freewheel body, and use those to engage with when using various 'magic force' techniques. I damaged a few freewheels in the pawl pockets trying to drive on those instead.
In ~1977 I got a bike which used a splined remover in the freewheel; an ATOM 77. Sure it needed the axle spacer to come off before you could use the remover, but it was obvious that the thing would never slip or strip. Brilliant! Unfortunately I could only get those freewheels local to me in 5s, and that wasn't enough for me; I had to put up with more (less severe) two-dog shenanigans because I was seduced by the lure of 7s New Winners...
These days there are still maniacs designing freewheels; a lot of single speed freewheels are built with no remover slots of any kind; one is expected to strip the freewheel and use something to engage with the inner part to unscrew it. Others have a lockring on the LH side of the body, which means that the freewheel has to come off the wheel if a shim is to be removed.... bonkers....
JohnW wrote:. I only had a few of the weaker two-dog freewheels but they were always a problem; much bodging along the lines you describe.......................I damaged a few freewheels in the pawl pockets trying to drive on those instead..................
You're a younger man than I am Brucey. I remember back to the 50s and limited schoolboy budgets - single speed freewheel - longer lasting chains and sprockets, and often other aspects of the wheel had rendered it life-expired before the question of changing the freewheel arose...........chromed steel rims, rustless spokes (which weren't), built-up hubs which worked loose...........and much lower personal mileage. Affordable wheels for me didn't change much in the early/mid 60s, but late 60s/early 70s brought the better quality Regina blocks over my threshold but remember also that sprockets would be commonly 24T max, and there was less leverage on the threads. The SunTour New Winner blocks brought Ultra6 and Ultra7 assemblies, up to 32 teeth big sprocket but still 2-dog removers. These were better, but the revelation came with the Shimano splined blocks..................1977 you remember - yes, I'd go along with that and I didn't look back. Do you realise that was 40 years ago? - and we're still using the same tackle?
Todays cassette Freehubs do solve a lot of problems, including bent and broken spindles, but the freewheel mechanism is probably the weakness. When you replaced a freewheel block you got a new freewheel - not the case now and maintenance of the freewheel is discouraged by manufacturers - you're not even supposed to lube them............and of course the back-end of a pre-freehub frame may have to be cold-set to a wider spacing. Nothing is perfect.
not that I ever did (in part because I didn't have a mech to shift them with...), but IIRC you could get Sun Tour sprockets up to 38T (meant for the pro compe/perfect freewheel). These could be made to fit onto New Winner bodies but left you with another problem; the third position threaded cog was only available up to 22T or something like that, which made for a megarange-esque freewheel. For several years you could buy an aftermarket converter than meant that a larger splined sprocket would fit onto the 3rd position, for a better touring freewheel.
I like freehubs in the shimano style. I like them so much that I converted all my derailleur geared solo bikes to use them as soon as I could manage, and I have not had a broken axle since (or heard of one, come to that). The last to be converted was my touring bike, in part because I preferred to have large flange hubs on that one, and large flange cassette hubs didn't really exist. Eventually I made my own large flange cassette hub by welding flange extensions onto a small flange one. I kept all my old freewheel stuff as spares for the touring bike and by the time I converted that, it was all starting to become rare and collectable. I have a box full in the attic that I can hardly lift...
If you are prepared to service a freewheel body then servicing a shimano freehub body is only a little more difficult. Unlike any other bearing on a bike, a slightly rough freewheel/freehub bearing does not hurt the bike's performance at all; there will just be a bit more noise when freewheeling, is all. In fact if you gave me the choice of a freewheel bearing with some free play or a slightly rough bearing without, I'd choose the latter every time. I confess I have let the water into a couple of unsealed freehub bodies in my time (pre-usage of super SFG lube) but they just became a bit rough, and were still quite usable.
Regarding using freehubs on older bikes with fewer sprockets and narrow back ends; IIRC Compass offered a 120mmOLN cassette hub for a while, not sure if it is still available. But.... 5s UG freehub bodies exist, and were usually not bolted on to the hubshell (fitting over an aluminium prong instead, which is not a perfect arrangement). However the freehub bore and pastrycutter profile is the same as later bodies, which means that with a bit of animal cunning you can bolt one of these bodies onto a more recent hubshell, and thus build a 5s/compact 6s cassette hub with 120mm OLN. The RH seal usually needs to be the UG type (although there is now an HG one that works just fine and is available as a spare part), and top sprocket needs to be a threaded UG one, but the others can be HG ones (with a modified spline so they fit onto the UG spline OK).
Also there is enough threaded length on a 6s UG body that it can be shortened slightly if required, for 5s use, with a threaded top cog that is turned (shoulder outwards). Again a 120mm OLN hub can be built this way, often with most of the RH locknut out of sight under the end of the freehub body. A slightly modified 6s UG body will also accept seven 9s sprockets, and can be secured with a UG top cog to yield a 'compact 8s' setup at 126mm width, in this case with one of the top sprocket threads off the end of the freehub body. IIRC it is a 6s UG top cog that you need; fitted without its customary spacer it is happily the exact correct width for 9s use.
7s HG bodies can be built up as 6s 126mm OLN if required. For a couple of years they made the freehubs to accept UG or HG cassettes, so they have internal and external threading, (but are not HG-C compatible, so they won't accept the smallest top cogs). There are such things as 8s HG/UG bodies but they are so rare that I have never actually seen one in the flesh. 8s HG bodies are not very useful for such purposes; there is no external thread for a UG top cog, and the internal lockring thread does not extend far enough to allow the body to be shortened appreciably. I don't fancy machining an external thread or indeed the internal thread deeper, since the body is 'all hard'.
So if you can track down a few UG bodies or early 7s HG/UG bodies and are prepared to 'have a go' there are plenty of options for narrow freehubs, otherwise not so much.
