...that eventually regained its dignity!

[MENTION=360474]Prowler[/MENTION] I'm proud of you for servicing your own. Good man!

I have more freewheel stories then I can really remember. One that comes to mind was centered around IIRC a Regina America freewheel, which was one of their last models.

A customer had sent one for service, which it sorely needed. When I opened it up one of the spacers for the outer bearing race/retaining ring self destructed. By this point Regina (as did Shimano) used steel spacers that were thiner than aluminum foil, and inevitably they rip and tear when the ring is removed.

The challenge was that without that one very thin spacer, the freewheel would bind. None of the spacers I had on hand either fit or spaced it correctly. The customer sent another Regina America to harvest for spacers. It was a no go. He bought another on ebay and had the seller send it to me directly. Again a no go.

Finally I experimented with aluminum foil and somehow managed to space it to acceptable tolerances. In the end, a job which should have taken 1-2 days ended up lasting a month!