While finishing a ride with @Wildwood the other day I suddenly felt some grinding and then jerky pedaling. The grinding was coming from the rear hub on the driveside. I looked back and saw the FW was at a cockeyed angle to the direction of travel. I stopped immediately with what I knew was a ride-ending, walk-of-shame mechanical.

Stuart rode the mile to where his car was and drove over to pick me up, saving me about a mile walking in cleats. When we got back to the apartment, this is what I found after I removed the rear wheel (bearings spilling out onto the floor not shown):











I've cracked a cog or two and damaged some removal prongs but I've never seen a failure of this sort. Is this common? Btw, I removed it using my Regina/Zeus thin-walled remover, no muss, no fuss. FW had so little wear it could be called new. What's really unfortunate is that this was my lowest-ratio unit, so I'll be heading off for Ebay in search of a replacement. I'll save the cogs for spares.

DD

I saw this exact thing happen about thirty years ago. Not me, just someone at the side of the road trying to find all the bearings at dusk. Regina freewheel. I don't think it was that common. Regina must have sold millions of those freewheels.

Sorry to hear this happened.

Certainly not a common issue. Worn out lots of freewheels and the only problems I've had has been with worn cogs and sometimes sticky pawls from the grease getting gummed up or too thick in cold weather. Good you had a rescue option close at hand.

I've got a CX or two kicking around. Not sure about the cog/tooth counts, at the moment. Will look and post on the For Sale forum, in you are interested.

Only FWs I ever had problems with are Helicomatics, and the single Regina CX I own(bought close yo NOS)....
Helicomatics eating their puny bearings and the Regina CX having internal pawl area clearance problems (never mind it's seeming propensity to seize on to hubs.) That cause horrible knocking sounds when freewheeling...... Had to actually open it up and use the Dremel on the FW body to fix it.
Not sure if I'll readily consider buying Reginas again......unless it's an America Superleggera, for a good price, maybe.....
In contrast, all my much cruder looking Maillard and Spidel (Non-Helicomatics) FWs, lots of them bought used, never gave me any problems through the years.....

Ooooh. That would drive me nuts.

Appears one of the catches / paddle was sticking and wasn't catching. Load went to other and she gave it her all. ...........

(Just my attempt to lift your spirit, Jeff.)

I had one break just under the threaded ring. Pushed it together and rode 2 miles home with most of the bearings gone. Pedaled slowly without coasting. Kinda treated it like a fixed gear so the pawls stayed engaged. That was 30 years ago. I don't think I would've tried that today.

Edit: I remember it also put a nice gouge in the large alloy spacer on the axle of my Campy record hub. I'm pretty sure I still have that hub. I'll have to look for it

Anyone else click on this thinking "another person that can't spell brakes".

RATS... I have always known Regina and her sisters to be top of the line. Glad to know you made it back without injury or damage...

That's what happens when you are gifted with legs of steel and the power of a Super Man!

What is amazing is how relatively clean the break appears to be. There had to be an issue with the piece of steel used to construct the inner body. If my father still had his mind (he has dementia), I'd love to show him these pictures. He was a metallurgist and was director of the quality control lab for an aerospace company. He looked at metal fatigue cracks under high powered microscopes for 40 years. This crack is nearly smooth and even and appears to be all in one layer.



What seems odd to me, is that this is on the inner body which carries the pawls where the break occurred. The inner body is always in motion when the wheel is spinning. The outer body transfers the human power via the pedals, cranks, chainring, chain and sprockets. While the inner body is the power transfer mechanism (drivetrain to hub to tire), there is relatively no stress where this break occurs.



Just above or outward from the break is where the outer bearing race/retaining ring is threaded onto the inner body. This part of the freewheel is basically passive, attaching the inner body to the outer body. I would think that somehow the outer bearings would all need to seize while the inner bearings continued to work just fine. The wheel would need to be completely stuck in place, while the rider exerted enough pressure on the cranks to twist and torque the inner body.

I didn't by any chance service this freewheel for you?

Sounds like there was a layer of impurity when they forged the inner body, causing a concentric crack. Italian metallurgy strikes again!!!

That's more-or-less what I told him on the spot. I think I may have used the word 'masher' tho'....


Must have been a result of all the climbing we did on that ride?

How deep does the puller go in when removing the freewheel? Sometimes it takes a lot of torque to remove them. Maybe it was stressed that way and just "gave up" during the ride?

Come to think of it, I remember a couple people having problems with CX freewheels BITD. Overall though, they were pretty reliable, and probably comparable to other freewheels of that era. I still have one on my Masi, and never had a problem with it.

Regina Oros were possibly more bulletproof; I don't remember anyone breaking one ever.

I'd guess offhand that it was over-torqued at some point with a removal tool - like gearbasher says, or possibly just a freak break. It happens.

Not sure I'd go with a Superleggera again. Had one completely fracture through about half the body. Had 2 gears for 12 miles back to my car but I made it

Thanks for all the suggestions. To answer a couple queries: I've probably installed/removed this FW a total of three times. Mostly I changed it out when I had an epic hilly day planned. Never a problem with removal; in fact, I put in the tool, placed my huge crescent wrench on it and voila! Done. No fuss. I didn't even have a problem removing the broken unit from the hub after the event, even though there was barely any spline left at the break.

Bob, you make some interesting points. And no, this was never serviced by you (just that alloy Zeus). I have to think in the end it was a metallurgy issue - and yeah, the break is clean. No dark spot in one place indicating a metal flaw. Pawls were in good shape and not stuck. Overall a very clean unit.

I am sure of one thing: it was not my leg power. My legs don't have much power these days

I will keep a close eye on my other CX; most of my remaining close-ratio FWs are Reginas, and they are Oros for the most part.

DD

Thanks Randy - can you give me a heads up if you do?

DD

Imagine if it had broken when we were going up that climb near Fremont? Ouch!

DD

Me, neither. Once was enough. I know Campy alloy FWs have a better rep, but I'm still not going to be using that anymore, either!

DD

I was show a picture of a failed Dura Ace sprocket, the first of the cluster. Rider had to use the smaller sprocket to continue the ride. The sprocket fell out of the cluster onto the ground.

He might have legs of steel as he grew up in the Pyrenees and would watch the Tour ride by. He does about 150 miles every week end over three rides in training for a century in August.

Thank you for the heads up! I'm into the America Superleggera model because of the weight savings, did not know it might also have issues with its body's reliability, which is strange, cause I thought they went with a steel body to make them tougher than other lightweight FWs........... which now kinda tell me that some Regina FW models are just not the quality FWs most of us might have thought they were.

There you go. Exactly the same fracture that occurred on my Superleggera, the only difference being that it happened to the next-to-last cog on the inboard end. It's funny that these used steel bodies so weren't that much lighter in overall weight, but the alloy used must have been a bit iffy if they were consistently breaking in this way (mine also cracked at the trough).

DD

Well, to be fair, the SL model seemed to be iffy where the alloy cogs are concerned, not the steel body. In @scozim's photo, the break is though the alloy cog (same break I experienced years ago on my SL). I wonder if there was some sort of metallurgy issue with those cogs, too, as mine broke in the exact same way and the FW had very, very little wear. I was climbing a very, very steep hill on Oahu when I did mine in.

DD