Old 01-04-19 | 11:09 AM
  #17  
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3alarmer
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From: Sacramento, CA

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...while I have, indeed, experienced the co-op mechanical environment problem of Suntour 2 prong freewheel removal tools not lasting very long before the two little prongs are damaged in a manner that makes the tool useless, I attribute that to user error in that chaotic system. Once the tool has been misused a couple of times, the teeth on the tool are no longer square, and it becomes another paperweight. I used to bring along my own to work there.

That said, if you're using a lot of older frames in the 120 spaced road version, you really cannot afford to pass up used Suntour freewheels, and they have gotten pretty pricey on the e-bay. Not sure what you're using for a penetrating oil, but my perennial advice to mix up some 50/50 acetone and ATF, and to keep some of it in a small, castoff Triflow squeeze bottle, with a small plastic straw in it to aid in directing the application of it applies to this as well.

Besides being excellent quality freewheels, there are still a bunch of them in the used parts stream. And it's possible to scrap out a few of them and get some cog wheels in various sizes so you can recog the ones you run into where one cog has worn teeth, but the rest of them are fine. Besides the Shimano 5 and 6 freewheels, they are the only freewheels I attempt to recog any more. The process is pretty straightforward. Once you get to 126 road spacing, and 6 speeds on the back, there are plenty of usable Shimano freewheels that are, indeed, easier to remove.

Anyway, I have to drive an hour each way to get to the nearest volcano, and it's currently dormant.
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