Originally Posted by devinfan

Well, others may have different experiences with them. Pain #1: they only accept Helicomatic freewheels, which you can only get on ebay. Pain #2: They don't last very long, and when they crap out you need a special tool to remove them. I could probably handle Pain #1 and 2, but here is my experience:

Last year I was hammering up a steep hill in a fairly high gear when suddenly and without warning my Helicomatic freewheel said "Non!" and decided to freewheel forward instead. My pedal zipped around at an astonishing speed and cut right through my ankle, all the way to the bone. I looked down at my leg and in addition to all the grease and gore I could see a little dangling achilles tendon, like a fishing line, and the chipped bone. It took half an hour for the doctor in emergency using what looked like a pot-scrubber to clean all the grease out of the wound, and during that half hour I came up with all kinds of names for the Helicomatic system that I can't reprint here. So yeah, they freakin' suck, that's the problem with them. Just my opinion, of course.