Originally Posted by
Velo Mule
Pastor Bob, you have made your points eloquently. And, I agree with you. I know that many here don't want to open up a free wheel and try to corral all those tiny balls and it is easy to buy an new one. I like my old SunTours and Shimanos. It is not too hard to do. By the way, I also like Regina Oro's and Atom freewheels, but don't have any in the fleet now.
I think Sheldon Brown advocated for not opening up a freewheel and I see his point. If your pedaling, there is no friction from the freewheel, there is nothing slowing you down, the only time a freewheel will slow you down is when you are coasting. A bike shop would never rebuild a freewheel, but as a hobbyist, I do it.
I like smooth quiet freewheels even if it doesn't really improve my efficiency.
A bike shop won't rebuild a freewheel because it'd cost the customer as much or more than a new freewheel would. I think that's why so many home bicycle mechanics learned to do their own freewheel rebuilds. Besides that, it's not really that hard to do. The hardest part is getting the body back onto the carrier without displacing any of the ball bearings. The next trickiest part is getting the pawls into place as the freewheel is reassemble. All that isn't really hard to but is kind of finicky.
Cheers