Originally Posted by
Widsith
I can't see anything but metal between the cogs. If there's plastic there, would it be visible?
I've already flushed out the freewheel with mineral spirits and relubricated it with a 1:1 mixture of chainsaw bar oil. That helped some, but the freewheel still is really noisy. It sometimes makes a loud "clank" while under load, and on hills it vibrates the whole drivetrain enough for me to feel it in my feet. The problem is that the bearing surfaces have worn to the point that no matter how much I tighten the ring above the top set of bearings, the center of the freewheel still "wobbles." I can put my fingers inside the hole in the center of the freewheel body and wiggle it back and forth, and see the crack around the ring narrow and widen as the center moves. There also is some forward-and-back movement as well as side-to-side.
I've had some trouble with the vibration causing the ring to loosen and start unscrewing while I'm riding. It gets REALLY loud then and the ring gets loose enough to turn with just my fingers. The last time it happened I screwed it down so hard that I thought I was going to break the pins off my pin spanner, and it doesn't seem to have loosened again, but there's still considerable sideplay in the center of the freewheel body. The NOS body I have is the same model, and it doesn't wobble like that, so that much freeplay apparently isn't normal.
I'm starting to think I ought to just replace the whole freewheel, but since it's a vintage bike, I'm trying to keep it as "original" as possible, or at least use NOS replacements of the same type. But this problem has kept me from riding more than two or three times in the last three weeks, and I'm getting tired of spending more time working on the bike than riding it.
Most of the time the plastic spacers are a dark grey which can look deceptively like metal especially if dirty. It's a possibility, of course, that you don't have any plastic spacers, but most every freewheel I've ever taken apart has had them.
I don't understand how the body could be in such bad shape if the cogs are still good, those bearings are only in use while you coast, after all. Perhaps the cogs have already been replaced at some point or the body has been rebuilt incorrectly or something.
There's on other option to try but it will require some ingenuity. You can put the wheel on the bike, shift into the lowest gear, secure a chainwhip or length of chain on the small cog and use leg power to break it loose. It's something I would do with the bike mounted on a trainer or with an assistant or two, but you should be able to generate plenty of torque in that fashion. It's actually an old touring trick from back in the days when one might need to replace a spoke on a freewheel-equipped rear wheel with a minimum of tools. A length of cable and a short piece of chain can fit handily in a tool kit and when affixed to the frame permit you to remove the freewheel cogs without removing the body.
Good luck!