Cycling UK Forum

I noticed IRD(http://www.interlocracing.com) make high quality monolithic 5 and 6 speed freewheels:

for futureproofing, I wondered if a threaded freewheel body which took cassette sprockets would be a good product to sell: they could sell spacers so that five/six speed indexing pitch was kept.

For long life perhaps ratchet/pawl and bearings could have a grease port.

at 135mm OLN should 5 or 6 speed be dishless?

I should have thought that the market for freewheels was limited to people who already had old wheels; some will be people just keeping an old bike going and others will be into the Classic Lightweights pride-and-joy thing.

It seems to me that a screw-on freewheel is inherently inferior to a freehub - I cannot think of anything to recommend freewheels for, except for existing stuff. Splined sprockets on freewheels were an improvement on the older threaded ones for various reasons, but I don't think a freewheel could be future proofed any more than say a 78rpm record.

In principle, I like it!

Would go a long way to eliminating expensive replacements if parts of the freehub that are actually part of the hub itself failed. I lost a rear Mavic Crossride wheel when a broken pawl chewed up the rear hub.

May also make the Campag/Shimano interchangeability a bit easier on the wallet.

The inner diameter of shimano splined sprockets is very similar to the diameter of freewheel thread. You'd need to establish a new size for either the splines or the freewheel threads... sorry to burst your bubble

The freehub beats screw on Freewheels handsdown IMO,I can,t see any advantages of Freewheels,F/hubs have the driveside bearings nearer to the dropout making the them stronger,especially for loaded touring.
Cassettes can be split and reassembled with whatever ratios the rider requires,within reason,seperate sprockets can be bought from Rose ver Sand.
If a Freehub fails the hub is easily stripped and a new F/hub fitted,but more often than not they just need relubing via the oilseal at the back.
All in all its difficult to see how they can be improved on

reohn2 wrote:The freehub beats screw on Freewheels handsdown IMO,I can,t see any advantages of Freewheels,F/hubs have the driveside bearings nearer to the dropout making the them stronger,especially for loaded touring.

Totally agree.

I broke 3 Campag Record rear axles (screw on freewheels) not that I'm faintly Mark Cavendish (he's lucky, he has cassette hubs anyway and wasn't probably born) - but because the drive side bearings were so far form the drop out and they probably weren't designed for low geared touring bikes.

And in days gone past we probably lived with higher gears and a more macho approach to hills?

Give me Shimano freehubs any day

There is one advantage freewheels have over Freehubs, the freewheel mechanism for a freewheel is a larger diameter. This means there are smaller loads transmitted through the pawls. I've seen fewer broken freewheels than Freehubs on tandems and low-geared touring bikes but YMMV. Not arguing about all the other Freehub advantages though.

Definitely the freehub is an improvement. On occasion getting a freewheel off could be extremely difficult.
I've never broken an axle with a freehub. It's much easier to remove the cassette and clean the sprockets. Also it's possible to replace an individual worn sprocket.

Suggestion was meant only as an improvement for (the presumably) large pool of older bikes with 5/6 speed freewheels:

with a threaded freewheel to cassette converter they can live on:

An alternative would be a narrow cassette hub for older bikes:

whether monolithic freewheel or narrow cassette: an advantage is less dished or undished rear wheel is possible without spreading seatstays too much (or at all):

a narrower cassette would therefore be more useful to all tourists provided they are happy with fewer cogs.


NB as cassette wheels have spacers on non-drive side (minimising dishing), isn't this side of the axle now unsupported.......

It was always possible to replace individual sprockets on freewheels too. Any decent bike shop would have a rack behind the counter, on which Regina sprockets of all sizes were hung. I remember the one in Condors, when they were on the other side of Grays Inn Road, and the one in the local lightweight dealer in Cheshire that I used to visit as a teenager.

Spares were also available - so if you broke a pawl, you bought just that, a new Regina pawl, from the LBS, not by posting on a cycling forum asking if anyone knew anywhere nationwide that actually stocked spare parts.

The standard spacing was also a key advantage - all wheels worked with all bikes.

Freewheels could be stripped for servicing and maintenance, of course. The Suntour Ultra design almost foretold the freehub in having a special spanner to take it apart. That was where I did have a problem once - shifting the top sprocket on a Regina freewheel, which locked on all the other sprockets.

Freehubs probably are a better mechanical design overall, but for practical purposes you need to look at all the things that can end the life of a part. For example, I've got some Gipiemme wheels. The freehub takes Shimano cassettes, but the hub itself is non-standard. I'd back that to not be serviceable soon because the parts aren't available. It's only the outside of the freehub that has to meet Shimano standards.

My fear therefore is that we have swapped something that was theoretically weaker, but could be fixed in the medium to long term, for something that is stronger but can't. In that circumstance, the weaker part is more reliable.

drossall wrote:... Freehubs probably are a better mechanical design overall, but for practical purposes you need to look at all the things that can end the life of a part. ....

I'm not sure you are comparing like with like. There was indeed a time when you really could buy spares for almost everything. The heyday of the freewheel coincided with that golden age. Buy a freewheel today and the availability of spares is no better - and probably a lot worse - than the availability of spares for freehubs and bike equipment more generally.

It seems to me that multiple freewheels were an innovative way of increasing the usefulness of the single freewheel. The freehub made the leap of shaking off the limitations of the screw-on design. Not only has it allowed a significant increase in the number of sprockets, but the small sprockets can now be much smaller, further extending the overall range of ratios available.

Probably fair point, but the freehub has exacerbated the problem, because there are several brands, each with several different numbers of cogs, and each made by several companies whose freehubs may not be interchangeable in the way that you could have swapped a five-speed Suntour for a five-speed Regina.

So even my nine-speed Shimano-compatible, to use the example mentioned above, can't be replaced by a standard nine-speed Shimano unit, let alone getting individual replacement pawl springs, which was a nightmare - loads of nagging of the distributor, and no chance of just junking the unit because that would have taken the hub and wheel with it.

Shimano freehubs?

Try Campagnolo

No, Gipiemme freehubs. Which does of course mean that, in theory, you can switch to Campagnolo with just a change of freehub. However, on my experience, that would give a Campagnolo-compatible freehub with none of the spares availability at which you are hinting (and you still can't buy Campagnolo spares down the LBS like you used to be able to).

Presumably, that's not the only make that won't take a standard freehub.

Whereas all makes of freewheel fit a standard thread.

The (very) low end Shimano stuff works on this principle. The larger ratios have a larger spline so there's some room for the gubbins inside. No idea what the spacing is - pretty sure there were only 7 cogs on the one I saw.