removing a regina corsa freewheel

[kendlemam]

restoring an old but serviceable alloy wheel with a 23/14 5speed freewheel and wish to replace it with a 28/14 freewheel ,any ideas on how to remove it and or replace the cogs on the regina cosa freewheel with other cogs, wheel dates back to the 1960s,the regina works runs perfect but I wish to lower the gearing, any ideas welcomed.

[Keezx]

You can remove it with a freewheel remover with 2 notches....
To replace cogs you don't need to remove it.
Get yourself 2 chainwhips, hold the second cog and unscrew the first one (counterclock)
For the rest you have to look how the cogs are fitted, some might be fitted with notches (the bigger ones)
Biggest problem will be how to get new cogs, almost impossible, especially the larger ones.
Couple of years ago I bought a 6 speed 14-28 freewheel in a do it yourself store, probably Chinese.
Google with "Sunrace"they still make screw freewheels.
http://www.fietsparts.nl/fietsonderdele ... 28-sunrace
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/sunrace-freewheel

[Brucey]

possibly it will come off if you use a regina freewheel remover. But the two-dog remover is not a strong design, so they often break. NB not all two-dog removers are the same, so don't assume that (say) a suntour one will fit a regina freewheel.

You can always knock the lockring off (CW, it is on a left handed thread) catch all the balls and pawls, then put the body centre in a bench vice, and unscrew it. But if you can't reassemble the freewheel or you damage the centre in the vice, that'll be the end of that freewheel.

In theory you can swap the sprockets around on regina bodies but

a) they don't come unscrewed at all easily

b) some of them are often (on regina freewheels) on a left thread on the left side of the body (so you need to remove the freewheel from the wheel before you can mess with these anyway)

c) finding the cogs to swap about is very difficult now.

hth

cheers

[Mick F]

Biggest problem will be how to get new cogs.

+1

I would try to buy them first, before you think about anything else.
Meanwhile, consider buying a whole new (modern) wheel.

[kendlemam]

thank you all for your replies,not as easy as I thought,as its a nice wheel perhaps i'll keep it intact and lower my gearing by getting a smaller chainset, thanks again .

[Brucey]

IME the biggest problem will be removing the old cogs from a Regina Corsa freewheel body without something breaking.

These freewheels are absolute sods even if they are stripped on a weekly basis. If they have seen much use the cogs might as well be on for good; they all tighten as you pedal and in fact it is not possible to remove all the cogs at once from some types of regina freewheel body; you need one cog on to allow purchase to remove the second to last one...



this is a regina extra; it has two LH threaded cogs and three RH threaded ones, which is (IIRC) similar to the 'corsa' model. You can see the body has the final RH cog on it still; you could only unscrew this by screwing another LH threaded cog on. These freewheels often break, or break the tools that are used on them, when they are stripped down.

cheers

[Brucey]

you can see the LH/RH threading on the body here



If you can get the cogs off, you can keep the 23 as a #2 sprocket and just get a larger #1 sprocket.

But once the freewheel is off the wheel, you may as well just replace it with another TBH.

cheers

[Keezx]

Sounds a bit strange to me....
I my racing days (1976-1990) I used Maillard Course pignons, and I don't remember having any problem with disassembling and replacing cogs.

[Brucey]

yes but IIRC Maillard Course freewheels only have a few of the smaller sprockets threaded and the rest were splined, like this 1980's one;



As well as the lower tightening torque with the smaller cogs, I think the threading lay have been slightly coarser too, which means the sprockets don't tighten so much. A Maillard freewheel from the 1970's is much, much easier to deal with than a regina from the 1960s; for one thing you can remove all the sprockets leaving the body on the wheel, which you can't with the older regina models.

IIRC the older models of the Maillard 'Atom' freewheel (from the 1960s) are also built like regina ones, with reverse threaded cogs on the left side. So are some 'Everest' freewheels, too.

You can normally identify such freewheels because the back face is perfectly flat; there is no need for a shoulder to retain the largest sprockets when the freewheel is assembled this way.

cheers

[Keezx]

Well, it seems I made the right choice in the old days......

[Brucey]

Well, it seems I made the right choice in the old days......

I reckon!

My LBS back then had good stocks of suntour stuff, so I went with that for many years. In hindsight the Maillard system might (apart from the wheel dish which IIRC was ~1mm worse for the same gearset) have been a better choice because there were more splined cogs than with suntour, but SunTour were early with 'compact' freewheels and that plus the local parts availability swung it for me.

I had a couple of regina freewheels early on; the screw threading, the feeble removers, etc put me right off them.

cheers

[David9694]

possibly it will come off if you use a regina freewheel remover. But the two-dog remover is not a strong design, so they often break. NB not all two-dog removers are the same, so don't assume that (say) a suntour one will fit a regina freewheel.

You can always knock the lockring off (CW, it is on a left handed thread) catch all the balls and pawls, then put the body centre in a bench vice, and unscrew it. But if you can't reassemble the freewheel or you damage the centre in the vice, that'll be the end of that freewheel.

In theory you can swap the sprockets around on regina bodies but

a) they don't come unscrewed at all easily

b) some of them are often (on regina freewheels) on a left thread on the left side of the body (so you need to remove the freewheel from the wheel before you can mess with these anyway)

c) finding the cogs to swap about is very difficult now.

hth

cheers

I want to service the rear wheel bearings of my commuter hack - but the 6 speed Regina Extra freewheel is in the way. The freewheel has got a little bit of play in it, but seems ok. I think the removal tool it would need is the Park FR-4 for £10. Am I better off leaving it alone? But I’ve done the front wheel and headset and they were both pretty greaseless. I can obviously do the NDS wheel bearing.

[drossall]

I can't see why there's any harm trying to remove one. Make sure you bolt it down with the wheel nut though, to discourage slipping as above. You just need enough slack to allow the thing to turn and remove the freewheel.

[Brucey]

FWIW you can do a normal service on the DS hub bearing even without removing the freewheel. Some of those tweezers which have a crank in them are handy so that you can swab the ballrace out even though the dustcap is still in place.

cheers

[julianm]

There are plenty of new 14-28 Shimano freewheels on Ebay for a tenner, which would be my choice to resolve the issue.