hubmeister

You lace up a fake wheel using a bent rim and worn cables

Before: https://www.image-share.com/ijpg-2452-238.html
After: https://www.image-share.com/ijpg-2452-239.html
The note: https://www.image-share.com/ijpg-2466-263.html

The owner wanted to save the hub, but for some reason
all the spokes had been cut.

nymtber

That's awesome. But the note is even better!

Some people just have a natural ability to think out a solution

KLiNCK

Freewheel removal tool?

hueyhoolihan

the simplest way is to secure the hub to a 2x4 with a few nails. then use the proper freewheel remover as shown above, although the OP was inventive, and patient, i'll say that.

i hope that wheel was laced properly and 3cross.

Wilfred Laurier

i think you missed one detail of the problem

i assume a freewheel remover was a part of the solution used
but was just not mentioned because of the obviousness

RaleighSport

Nice I was thinking this might be a joke thread, but that's another good idea in the fight against junking parts.

cny-bikeman

It was not a terribly common problem, but at the first shop I wrenched we easily fashioned an adjustable jig to facilitate removal in such cases. Took less time than lacing to make it, very quick to use.

hueyhoolihan

this is true...

i bought a new rear flipflop hub. one side was designed for a fixed cog, the other for a singlespeed freewheel. when the hub arrived, and before lacing it to a rim, i wanted to see how my chainline was. so i screwed on a freewheel that i already had, mounted the hub with freewheel attached in the rear track forks and put on a chain. of course, i turned the cranks a few times just... well because it was there. then removed the wheel and only then did i see my predicament. i eventually got the darn freewheel off, but i was sweating it...

i think i might have had to partially build up the rear wheel to get it off. to complicate matters i couldn't use the drive side holes on the hub because that damn freewheel was in the way!

Slash5

In another thread someone trying to remove a freehub from a hub wrapped the hub in a old tube and put it in a vice and it worked.
I bought a clearance hub figuring I'd use it for spare parts and hadn't thought about how I was going to get the freehub off. Going to have to try it someday.

fietsbob

It's a Doh! .. cutting the spokes out of a wheel before loosening the freewheel is an example of someone
not thinking a job through , before jumping in.

the leverage of the rim is required to make the removal tools work.

hubmeister

Cool! What did the jig look like?

Chombi

Some do not realize how tight a FW can be on a hub, especially if it's been on there for years and some corrosin between the hub threads and FW might have started to weld the two together. I've encountered situations where even though the wheel is complete/still spoked, the amount of effort I had to exert to break the FW off the hub (with the proper FW removal tool) was unbelievable. Some people even end up breaking off whole sections of threads off a hub to break off the FW. So, everyone out there, please do not cut spokes off old wheelsets unless you get the FW off the rear hub first!!

bobotech

I built a little jig for a vise. I took 2 2x6 chunks of wood, clamped them together with a small 1/4 inch shim in between, and drilled with a hole saw roughly the diameter of common shimano rear hubs. I then mounted iron plates to the backs of both of the 2x6s which now had the round valley that fit the hubs.

We then can put some pretty good pressure on the jig and remove most freehubs (I was saving decent 8-9-10 speed freeehub bodies for use on older classic early freehub hubs). We have used it for removing a couple of freewheels but it isn't probably strong enough to do so on most super tight freewheels.

You can see the wood before I mounted the iron plates next to my truing stand.

bobotech

I really like the OP's solution though!